赏石图 138cmx35cmx2
Introduction to Ding Yare
Teacher of Nanjing University of the Arts, Ph.D. of Central Academy of Fine Arts, painter, art critic and cultural scholar
Answer a few questions on the topic of contemporary ink painting
Text/Ding Yalei
1. In general, how should audiences understand the concept of "contemporary ink"?
It depends first and foremost on who the audience is. Talking about art today may be the first thing to do with the question of distinguishing audiences. If we were talking about the general public, I think they would be some distance away from the art we were talking about. They should be closer to the types of art presented online, film, and television platforms. Therefore, if contemporary ink is occasionally a topic of discussion on the Internet and television news, the general public is likely to become a short-lived audience.
So if we distinguish the general public, then contemporary ink painting may only be a topic for people in the industry. I think the audience in the industry has their own judgment on how contemporary ink painting should be understood, and it is a very stubborn judgment. Personally, I'm not too much of a temporal prefix for art history by prefixing ink with the word "contemporary". If this ink is defined as contemporary, what about a hundred years from now? What about 500 years from now? What about a thousand years from now? Still called contemporary ink? Called New Ink? So this method of definition is irresponsible, a kind of academic laziness and short-sightedness that lacks a sense of history.
Various changes in the form of Chinese ink painting, influenced by Western culture, have been taking place since the end of the Ming Dynasty, especially after 1840. From the center of the shape to the object, from the abstract ink experiment, to today's ink illustration and symbolization, it has always been happening. In fact, these have become an integral part of today's Chinese ink painting, along with the traditional form of Chinese ink painting. No matter how you look at it, that's the status quo. Chinese painting, like Chinese culture, can only emerge under the status quo, and it is impossible to go back to the past.
It should be said that in today's current situation, what we can do and think about is how we should inherit history and the future as contemporary people, or how to tell our future generations what our history is really like. I think that the creation of contemporary ink painting is future-oriented, but at the same time, it lacks historical responsibility. We all know that in the future, young people in China and young people in foreign countries, and even young people around the world, may all share the same McDonald's burger and communicate without barriers, but at this time, what can they communicate? What else is there to communicate?
2. In your opinion, what are the reasons for the re-emergence of "contemporary ink" in the art market after 30 years of silence?
Thirty years ago, ink painting could still be called "contemporary ink painting", which in itself is a phenomenon with no sense of history. In the words of young people on the Internet, this is full of a sense of disobedience.
As a teacher in an art school, it is not a question I can answer about whether a work of art has gained or regained the favor of the market. This should be the area of expertise of business school teachers. Let me say that I can only combine my professional knowledge to look inside from the outside of the door, which can be regarded as overstepping. In fact, in the history of art, there are countless cases of this kind of artistic value rediscovery. Foreign ones include El Greco, Hals, Van Gogh, Modigliani, and Chinese ones include Xu Wei and Jin Nong. These artists were poor like ghosts when they were alive, and it was only a few years or even hundreds of years after their deaths that their value and significance were rediscovered by art history and had a significant impact. Whether this is the same thing as the rediscovery of today's market, I don't know. After all, I'm not a faculty member in a business school. It's best to ask a business school expert to answer this question, and if there is an expert in the art field who can answer this question, either he is talking nonsense and cheating some loose money, or he must have taken a double degree. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those.
3. Since the re-emergence of "contemporary ink", it has also been questioned such as "pseudo-concept", in your opinion, what negative tendencies have been presented by "contemporary ink"?
I think what you mean by "raising eyebrows" should refer to the market's eyebrows. There's nothing strange about that. China is already the world's second-largest economy and is sitting on the sidelines. It should be inevitable that the art market will rise. After 2000, oil painting used to be hot, and later, ink painting also became hot, which is normal, it used to be too cold. If there is a negative effect, it may be easy to make people think that this kind of popularity is completely determined by the artistic value, especially if it will mislead the artists who profit from it, and more money will always make people hard. I have full confidence in China's economy, and I feel that its future is limitless. In the same way, I also believe that the price of Chinese art will continue to rise in the future. I don't think the works of the Ming Dynasty should be cheaper than those of Leonardo da Vinci. But there are contemporary ink painters whose works are more expensive than the works of outstanding painters of the Ming Dynasty, and I think he should go back to the Ming Dynasty to talk about things.
4. In your opinion, what are the collectible values of contemporary ink painting and its future trends (or challenges to the art market)?
I don't know much about the collection. But I think that with the development of the economy, collecting will slowly become a very common behavior from a game with money. Whether it is contemporary ink painting or traditional ink painting, serious works created by serious artists have the possibility of being collected. The seriousness here is not the meaning of ideology, but the attitude towards artistic creation. After all, the economy is growing, the currency is depreciating, and there is only so much art that a serious artist can create.
As I said earlier, the challenges of contemporary ink painting to the art market are, as I said earlier, those that sell more expensive than those of Ming painters will either not rise in another 500 years, or the works of Ming Dynasty painters will rise quickly. Therefore, I believe that the greatest challenge of contemporary ink painting to the art market is its general impulse to seriously overdraw the value of art, which also includes the loss of historical responsibility by art critics for the sake of petty profits.
5. What new atmosphere does "Contemporary Ink" bring to the art market?
I think that the new atmosphere brought by contemporary ink painting to the art market is an indirect promotion of innovation. The biggest effect of market improvement is that artists' creative confidence has been greatly improved. Today's artists rarely have heavy historical baggage, and they are no longer entangled in some unnecessary historical debates. Their vision is broader, and they already have the valuable potential to transcend the constraints of a narrow culture, which is also a sign of cultural confidence.
In the actual historical context, the revival of culture is not the revival of cultural forms, nor is it simply re-instilling the Four Books and Five Classics and the Hundred Schools of Thought into the minds of the Chinese people, but the revival of culture should be more important than the restoration of cultural confidence. Therefore, the restoration of the confidence of contemporary ink painters should play a good guiding role in the future development direction of Chinese painting and even Chinese culture. Today's Chinese painters should take advantage of the market to transcend the barriers of history, nationality and culture, and contribute to the reconstruction of the core values and cultural self-confidence of Chinese painting.