Author: Bai Ming, Chinese contemporary artist, an important promoter of the development of modern ceramics in China, the director, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Ceramic Art at the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University.
Such a piece of mud has been touched by the hands of many artists, different materials, different firing methods, especially in China, there are countless famous kilns. Some people may wonder: can you turn it into a moldable thing, pull a blank, make a bottle, make a sculpture... or even such a simple piece of "mud", with a wire to pull open the section of a piece of mud, a knife down, this is also a "work".
By John Mason (USA).
So the question is, how do we define "pottery works"?
These are all pottery that you see, and they have nothing to do with the traditional education of the morality with Chinese aesthetics, the concept of making utensils, and the unity of heaven and man! Because of this contrast, there will be many different emotional reactions, some people may be very extreme "what art is this, we don't need"; some people will feel very novel "how can it impress me like that, more than the artifacts in daily life" can move me more. Some people are curious to think, how to understand these works?
Marc· Leuhold (USA) two Elizabeths 2016
Modern pottery and modern life
Existence is reasonable. All art forms have their reasons for their existence, and when we bring Chinese ceramics into the history that is closely related to us to understand, we will have a sense of belonging to it, which is an emotional dependence.
The same is true of the West, when modern art originated, they had their own history, they still had their own laws, exquisiteness and norms. It's just that they have gone farther than us during the time when civilization has entered the modern era, and we have been ahead of us for thousands of years before this, so we will tolerate this small period of time when they are ahead of us.
These are the works of the most important potters in the world that I have selected. These works contrast with all the memories related to ceramics in our history, and they have become a branch of the entire history of Western contemporary art, representative works in the history of modern ceramic art.
Steve Heinemann (Canada) works
Since they are works in the history of art, they must also be established under the criticism of many judgments and visions under the norms of civilization. So don't easily think that this work is very novel, and think that they are chaotic. We should look at western modern pottery and Chinese modern pottery with an objective and emotional view of our treatment of traditional Chinese art.
In front of us, there are three pieces of modern pottery, which are three different forms, so we will cut them apart one by one. What kind of era has allowed the West to bring China into the contemporary cultural context?
Richard Notkin (USA) works
If you put it in a large space-time background to think, many problems actually do not exist, but precisely because people only rely on inherent judgment, very strong and confident to come to a conclusion, he often does not understand the internal relationship between modern ceramics and modern art and modern life and modern civilization.
If you want to answer what is modern pottery, it cannot be equated with seeing a lot of novel works to understand that modern pottery is actually closely related to the life of our time. All art reflects the truest and warmest breath of that era, and only such art can become a classic for our descendants to follow. "Traditional" is true in China, and "modern" is also true in the West.
A classic in the history of modern pottery
The spatio-temporal relationship behind a picture
Looking back at this hundred years. When it comes to Sigmund Freud, it is not very old, but when we talk about Guangxu and Tongzhi, we will feel too old. Only to say that at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, our young people had no memory, and then to the Republic of China and the late Qing Dynasty, it felt even older. So do you know that Guangxu and Freud were contemporaries?
Why is there such a big contrast? Talking about Freud can talk about it, thinking that we understand Western psychology, but talking about Guangxu feels very far away. This is because our era has undergone too many magnificent changes compared to "Guangxu", almost reborn, and although the West has also changed, they have advanced smoothly.
Now we talk about psychology seems to be more mysterious, others go to see a psychologist will think that people have mental illness, but in the West to see a psychologist or by the psychologist intervenes in the counseling is a very ordinary thing. A considerable number of American soldiers who fought in the Iran-Iraq and Afghan wars had psychological guidance doctors, but he was not a mental patient. They are called "spiritual interventions."
We enter the era of reading pictures, not on the mobile phone every day to read WeChat Weibo, too many people are looking at acquaintances on the like but will not click on, I also make this mistake: it is difficult to click the article to read seriously, because the amount of information is so large that there is no experience to read.
But it's not because we have a lot of views and we know how to read pictures.
Although the era of reading pictures has come, most people are still at the level of visually seeing it for how to read pictures, and have not yet entered the thinking or through picture information to understand the relationship between time and space conveyed by this picture, which is the most important meaning of contemporary art today.
We are all linear life, it is difficult to understand the relationship between time and space behind a picture, if you are separated from this relationship, it is difficult to confidently say that you understand contemporary art, Understand China, understand the world.
Walter Gropius with his "Bauhaus"
The man in the picture above is Walter Gropius, and everyone who has attended art school will know him, the founder of the German Bauhaus. He changed the entire history of art education and ushered in a new era of art education, which is a new discipline of art related to design, logic, and ergonomics.
The greatness of the architect Gropius is that he hired the most outstanding people in the world at that time, such as Kandinsky, the representative of abstraction, and the "abstraction" we know actually originated from Kandinsky's artistic creation in 1910, abstract art has a history of more than 100 years, and when we look back, China is still in the Qing Dynasty. Abstract art began in the West during the Qing Dynasty, so we have a disjoint of nearly 100 years as a whole.
Earliest radio (1906)
In 100 years we can correspond to how far apart we are, and when we have this macro idea, space-time classifies us like a puzzle.
Where is art, and where are we today? Advanced does not mean that you use the world's most advanced iPhone, sitting on the most advanced aircraft can say "I am very modern"
Our way of thinking and ways have not followed suit, and we cannot say that we can use these devices to be the same as the people who design and create them. In fact, our thinking is relatively backward.
The decorative movement, also known as art nouveau, was produced in Europe and the United States at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, which is a continuation of the British New Arts and Crafts Movement, a formalist movement with extensive content and advanced ideas, involving more than ten countries, from architecture, furniture, products, jewelry, clothing, graphic design, book illustration and even sculpture and painting art, which has been influenced by it for more than ten years.
After reviewing the history of modern art, modern ceramics, and a brief history of Chinese ceramics over the past 100 years, we return to pottery. The very cultured, single aesthetic education of ceramics that we have been receiving is what we can see in museums. But we lack something else: the diversity of art.
Our museum, strictly speaking, does not pay attention to the history of world art, does not pay attention to the history of world civilization, although we have been talking about developing in the direction of a cultural power. But there is hardly a museum in china dedicated to world civilization.
Works of the world's modern pottery masters
Many small countries in the West have works that pay attention to the history of world art, such as Works from China, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Australia, and European countries in Austria. I have also seen works of art from Asian countries, including China, in San Marino (one of the world's smallest countries, Editor's Note). Not to mention the United States and Britain and other major art countries, our catchy British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the art of the Two Rivers Valley and Asia alone you can not finish a day. Do not underestimate the difference here, art plays an extremely important role in the basic quality education of the people.
How should we view the history of our civilization? I mentioned in a keynote speech "Museums are a space for storing the genes of human civilization": Human civilization is not only a national civilization, but China's museums are storing the genes of their own civilization, and most of them are imperial history and royal art, which is problematic, so that the people only know themselves, and do not know others.
Only know that you don't know that other people's problems will be very big, first of all, you will be blindly confident, blindly arrogant, reject others, and be lonely and self-congratulatory. This problem is also being concerned by the relevant departments now, because we do not have the funds to collect these things, we collect western works of art from ancient times to the present, no matter what grade of museum does not have such funds, but we cannot stop working because there is no such possibility. So today in Henan, in the important town of Chinese civilization, in the name of ceramics, into a channel of contemporary exchanges. This passage is much more meaningful in Henan than in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, so everyone here has the privilege of seeing the works of artists from all over the world.
So, I hope that everyone can bring their families to see [the art exhibition], how many talented people, here to pay for it. Artist selection, curatorial, set-up. Ceramic exhibition is not as simple as a painting exhibition, I have done ceramic exhibitions, basically all night sleepless, sleepless is not because you must stare in the field, because you can not rest assured. A box opens and may break a piece of work, not a responsibility, but an emotional inability to accept. The reason why ceramics are so loved is also because of its fragility.
Once a local leader ran to the School of Materials Science and Materials Of Tsinghua University and pulled me to their leader, saying that he was willing to spend tens of millions to study a ceramic that could not be broken. I said you don't do it, it looks like you solved a problem with ceramics, but at the same time you ruined all its beauty.
The reason why ceramics are beautiful and why people cherish them so much is because they are fragile, and fragility enhances the appeal of beauty, just like life. If people don't die, it seems to be a great contribution, then this earth is really all monsters, so people must not not die, and the same is true for ceramics.
Ceramics is precisely because you accumulate efforts to innovate to guide aesthetics, but it is fragile, can not withstand the collision, but as long as there is no collision damage, ceramics is eternal, when human beings die, as long as the earth still exists, ceramics, especially porcelain, it still exists. It would carry information about human genes for another civilization to discover. So, it is precisely this virtue that, if not broken, we will have a lot less to worry about.
National Museum of San Marino
Today's Beijing is not like Beijing, and Hainan is not like Hainan. Cities in the past had amazing characteristics and personalities, and now the convergence of cities is like the Cultural Revolution, sitting at the venue wearing the same costumes. The reason why it is colorful now is that everyone has a space for your free expression without violating ethics, morality, and laws, and it is very free to wear and use living habits. Without this relative self-characteristic, people living, in fact, there is not much meaning, this freedom is reflected in art, that is, the relationship between cultivation and creation.
White Ming Blue and White Works
These works of different ceramic materials are intentionally prepared for everyone and are classified. There are contemporary celadons, these blue and white are my works, blue and white can also be made very modern; this is the glaze red, the material is very traditional; iron oxide, iron oxide is one of the oldest decorative materials, our earliest blue and white flowers actually contain a lot of iron oxide, our faience pottery is also related to iron oxide.
In recent years, I have held several important solo exhibitions in France, the United States, and South Korea, such as the only exhibition on the fiftieth anniversary of the American Ceramic Education Annual Conference; the Senucci Museum in Paris, France, which has only done solo exhibitions for a few people in more than 100 years, and Zao Wou-Ki and Wu Guanzhong, after 23 years, in 2014, made my solo exhibition.
The first Zhongyuan International Ceramics Biennale Set-up site
Our topic today is how to appreciate modern pottery, which is also worth exploring, although the content is not much, but the amount of information in it is still relatively large.
First, technology and art. This is especially important in appellations, where they care so much about technology that they equate technology with art. Is technology important? It's definitely important, but I think as long as the technology can meet your creations and meet the needs you want to express, it is enough, superfluous, in fact, it does not mean much.
Minsheng Art Museum "Daiang - Bai Ming's Kingdom" Qingling Stone (2017)
We will improve our skills through time precipitation and diligent practice, which is why there are many skilled workers and few engineers now. The same is true of art, which you don't achieve with your efforts, but because it is related to human nature, creation, and aesthetics. These are to rely on emotions to grasp, it is not completely 1 + 1 equals 2, the relationship between technology and art is of course art first, art is later, which is related to creation.
Second, material and expression. Yes, we are expressing it with ceramic materials, but are ceramic materials only used to express containers? Expressing tradition? Or is it an expression of history and culture? How we understand tradition is worth exploring. Contemporary ceramics value the expression of materials, not just people expressing them, because we are constantly developing, constantly understanding materials.
For example, wood, wood also has its own language, personality and expression, how you use your own language and the language of wood, at that time you use wood materials, then your art will do a good job.
The same is true for ceramics, clay has its own language, when I become porcelain clay will become pure, pure will have pure requirements, when it becomes crude pottery, there are also requirements for simplicity, we can not impose on them can not bear or contrary to the requirements of clay, so modern art, more is the human emotion domination, to discover the material may express the desire, to guide the material to express. There's going to be a lot of new stuff coming up here.
White iron oxide works
Again, aesthetics and imagination. Aesthetics are our experience. Many insights and memories of the past will form experience, and when there is more experience, the imagination will be weak. How to be experienced without solidification, imagination and sensitivity. Tiangong and man-made are also such a topic.
In fact, the above can also answer the traditional and contemporary questions, and the relationship between them, and the combination of ingenuity and artificial creation.
Jingdezhen Baiming Studio
There is a category of appreciation in the tradition, called the stone viewing. Not any stone can be appreciated, this is related to the choice, what kind of stone can be moved into the garden, study, living room, appreciate it is a man-made choice, if you choose a stone, feel that a certain part is not appropriate, slightly adjusted, so as to lead a natural stone to a beautiful visual and imaginary space with a special meaning, this is the perfect combination of natural work and man-made.
Inheritance and innovation are especially worth talking about, first of all, to find out what is inheritance, everyone believes that retro, do the same as the Song Dynasty is inheritance, can be counted or not, can be regarded as reluctant, not counted is not true.
Kansas City, USA "Bai Ming · Kansas City" solo exhibition Form and Process 2016
When we talk about the Song Dynasty today, it is so good, but please note that in the Tang Dynasty, was there porcelain from the Song Dynasty? In the Han Dynasty, the gorgeous Tang Sancai did not have it, and in the Yuan Dynasty, the high-temperature color glaze was also absent, since there was no how it came out? innovation! The classics we follow are the greatest innovations of the time.
That kind of innovation guides the world no less than Bill Gates does today. The core of the traditional classics is that it is because it is innovative, has become a new aesthetic standard, and has been inherited by us to become a tradition. If you ignore this point, with the technology we have developed today, to imitate a Song Dynasty and a Tang Dynasty, do you still think that you are more glorious than them? Don't you think they won't identify with you? If you only take the imitation of antiquity to create a market, I am in favor of doing business, but do not take antique works as the glory of art. With the Song Dynasty, there is no need to build another Song Dynasty now.
Minsheng Art Museum "Daiang - Baiming's Kingdom" porcelain stone (2017)
In order to make this topic clear, we can change the concept of time, we are not talking about the past today, we are moving back three hundred years to talk about today, three centuries later, looking at today's China, China's Henan, saying that your Ru kiln is doing well, it is imitating the Song Dynasty. Do you think that three hundred years later, you will describe your 21st century imitation song Dynasty Ru kiln as your contribution? After three hundred years, you will understand what is inheritance and what is innovation, in fact, the core of inheritance is innovation, and there is no inheritance without innovation.
Law and freedom. All our Dharma comes from experience, from experiencing a certain subconscious, that it is a freedom, but it is not the freedom of life, it is the freedom of habit. The freedom of life is irreproducible, today's you are not yesterday's you, nor tomorrow's you, today is the only you, so I mean the freedom of life, the highest state of life and art.
The "Baek myung Works Exhibition" at the Power Art Center in Seoul, South Korea, releases water from the line
We can go back to the whole world to discuss a topic of culture: civilization is a river. I have talked about it in the dialogue, why is civilization a river? And not say it's the riverbed? People who have been to Xinjiang know that there is an ancient city, the Jiaohe Old Road, because of the vitality and prosperity brought by the river. It has dried up, it has become a ruin, and there is no life, so it is called Jiaohe Old Road.
Why is human civilization a river? The core is not the riverbed, it is water, it is endless, new water. The Yellow River water that is still flowing today is not the Yellow River in Li Bai's poem, nor is the rolling Yangtze River that Bai Juyi has seen, it is what people see today, and our descendants will look at the Yangtze River and the Yellow River again, nor what you and I see today, the water is fresh.
Minsheng Art Museum "Daiang - Bai Ming's Kingdom" Wenjun Bottle Qingling Stone (2017)
Today when we talk about modern pottery, we are to maintain a childlike heart and tolerate the aesthetics of all things: to treat Western art, to treat our traditions, and to treat our future.
Reprinted in: China Arts and Crafts Society WeChat public account