2022007
Stay curious
At the end of the countdown to the twenty-four solar terms, the Chinese and English "Li Chun" rose above the bird's nest, and at the end, the snowflakes and the olympic rings also rose into the air, Chinese romance, slowly blooming.
Fourteen years ago, on the night of August 8, 2008, the 29th Beijing Summer Olympics opened, and 29 huge footprints from 15 kilometers away, at a speed of one step every 2 seconds, along the central axis of Beijing, towards the Bird's Nest.
Since then, many people have remembered the creator who is famous for his fireworks.
Historical Footprint | Opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
The following is a previously written article about the artist Cai Guoqiang, reviewed together (there is a related documentary at the end of the article):
Ignited countless times, and is still afraid, Cai Guoqiang said: "However, I did it because I was afraid, not because I didn't care or wasn't afraid." "In him, this forward momentum is always there.
In China in the 1980s, the artistic atmosphere was somewhat dull, and Cai Guoqiang, who liked to think, began to do various experiments, he once directly put oil paintings on the fire to bake, observe the change of color; he also once cut the fireworks stick, poured the gunpowder out and sprinkled it on the canvas, and then lit it...
Gunpowder, like a wild horse that is difficult to tame, through its explosion and combustion to form an ideal picture, is not an easy task. Once, during the detonation of gunpowder, the canvas was ignited, Cai Guoqiang was overwhelmed, and his grandmother extinguished the fire, leaving a rich smoke texture on the canvas, and the artistic effect he had been looking for appeared.
"It is important to grasp the timing of the fireworks, but it is also not to be taken lightly when the fireworks are put out." Grandma's words gave Cai Guoqiang a great enlightenment, he understood that doing art is not the same as a simple gunpowder explosion, "not only the main points, but also extinguished."
Cai Guoqiang in his youth
At the end of 1986, the 29-year-old Cai Guoqiang left his reluctant grandmother and his beloved girlfriend to go to Japan.
At this time, the country was expanding day by day, affected by the rumor that "land will not depreciate", the volume of land transactions for the purpose of resale increased, land prices rose sharply, and even the slogan "Japan is the world's first" appeared on the islands. And the arrival of this Chinese boy is like a drop of water dripping into the sea, without waves, and no one cares.
In the first few months, he spent much of his time solving survival problems, including selling Chinese landscape paintings that Japanese people love. "However, every time I think about it, it's not someone who invites me to come, it's me who wants to come, so what does it matter?" Cai Guoqiang never felt that it was a hard day.
Soon after, he gave up paint and began to create works purely using gunpowder. After the recommendation of friends of art critics and the reports of NHK TV, more and more people know about a Chinese who draws with gunpowder. Looking back on the past, Cai Guoqiang said optimistically: "My life is very good, and there are always noble people in every place." I blew all day, saying that I was God's darling, but God was too far away, so they sent noble people to solve my problem. ”
If gunpowder is the language of oriental art that Cai Guoqiang is good at using, then feelings are the basis of his art. At a symposium in 2010, he said:
"Feelings are the foundation of an artist's values, I'm 52 years old and my grandma is 91 years old, so I've lived for almost half a century in an atmosphere of fear of losing her. Such emotions form the basis of many of my artworks. I travel the world, I am afraid of getting a phone call in the middle of the night, no matter what country or restaurant I sleep in, when I answer the phone in the middle of the night, my heart will beat faster. ”
The emotional delicacy makes him have a strong "destructive power" in artistic creation. "In terms of being a person, of course, I want to be a good person, rules and regulations, but in terms of doing art, I think the art of being a good person is worthless." So I need revolution, and I want gunpowder to be my friend, to venture together in the painting and see if I can make anything fun," he said, "or I wouldn't be doing art." ”
Nine-level wave | 2014
In fact, Cai Guoqiang has been taking risks and has been surprising everyone:
In 1993, Jiayuguan fireworks work "Extending the Great Wall by 10,000 Meters - A Plan for Aliens";
APEC Landscape Fireworks, Shanghai, 2001;
In 2003, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the establishment of Central Park in New York, the fireworks "The Wheel of Light Over Central Park";
In 2008, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games was "Historical Footprints";
2013, "One Night Stand" in Paris, France;
2014, Shanghai "Daytime Fireworks";
...
During this period, he also won a number of honors such as the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale and the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Painting Category of the World Culture Award. Of course, there are also some questions from Westerners – why work with the government?
In the eyes of Westerners, the simple binary opposition is the relationship between Chinese art and politics, "As for why the government is celebrated, I can't infer that people choose me, because I can choose not to participate." 」 He said that many people do not know that ordinary people have feelings for the motherland and culture, and they have repeatedly integrated into the grand event because "when I come back, the most attractive thing is to face some of the core problems of this country and think about them as their own problems." ”
Ladder
Cai Guoqiang and his art have never left his hometown of Quanzhou, or he brought Chinese concepts and art to the world.
In the early morning of June 16, 2015, a 500-meter-high, 25-ton burning "ladder" rose in Quanzhou and went straight into the sky, which was Cai Guoqiang's 100th birthday gift to his grandmother.
After the video was uploaded, it instantly detonated the network in the sea, Facebook attracted 30 million people to watch in two days, the United States "Time" magazine made a special report, and made NBC news headlines...
Ladder 2015
"Ladder" is a Chinese teenager's dream – looking at the stars and exploring the universe; it is also the emotional bond of ordinary Chinese – a ladder connecting with hometown and relatives. Cai Guoqiang worked hard for this dream for 21 years and experienced 3 failures:
First attempt in England in 1994;
Second attempt in Shanghai in 2001;
Third attempt in Los Angeles in 2012.
1994 in the UK
In Shanghai in 2001
Senior advisers on the project have even asserted that "ladder" is an impossible dream and that Cai Guoqiang should give up. Fortunately, he persevered, unfortunately, because grandma was seriously ill, she could not reach the scene and could only watch it through video. Cai Guoqiang, who is more than half a hundred years old, is like a child who is eager to be commended in front of his grandmother, and he smiles and says: "Grandma, your grandson is very good."
Cai Guoqiang and Grandma video
Thirty days later, Grandma died.
"A year after my grandmother died, my father died too. When I was a child, I used to sit on his lap and watch him paint those landscapes. He painted his hometown on matchboxes, which gave me a lot of experience, and it was they that took me to the art world and stood on the world stage. ”
Flower City in the Air 2018
In 2018, Cai Guoqiang was invited to Florence, the oldest city of art, to create "The City of Flowers in the Sky" inspired by Renaissance artist Botticelli's "Spring".
Before the explosion, he said: "I grew up in a plaster cast of Michelangelo's David, and I should have looked at David for hundreds of hours before and after. Put a fire to David and Michelangelo today, as if the pencil of a child had been drawn to the sky, and charcoal powder was sketched on David again..."
On his artistic path, gunpowder showed great power, but there was always a kind of introverted and dare not let go of the humanistic spirit. As for the word "art", he emphasized only two words:
My innate advantage is curiosity, and curiosity does not come from "mature" people, so the teenager inside me did not actually grow.