Regarding the possibilities of the future of Chinese ink painting, we must first return to the history of ink modernity in the 20th century. 20th century ink painting is mainly a modernist practice related to the transformation of Chinese painting or ink painting, from the perspective of China's own art history, the practice of ink painting in the 20th century is more suitable for discussion under the concept of "modernity".
This is not only to redefine the relationship between ink modernity and Western modernism, but also to examine how ink painting, as an independent language system, re-evaluates the "modernity" or "late Mingness" from the 17th century, that is, the amazing innovations created by the Bada, Shi Tao, Xu Wei, Gong Xian and others in the late Ming Dynasty that are close to modern forms.
Before starting this discussion, we must first discuss how ink painting in the early 20th century was defined as "new Chinese painting" from "literati painting" or "southern painting" after the Song and Yuan dynasties. As for how ink painting is defined as "Guohua", it is similar to how Chinese classics were defined as "Guoxue" at the end of the 19th century. After the late Qing Dynasty, the transformation of classics to Guoxue, or how to divide the definition of classics and Guoxue, is basically similar to the transformation of southern painting to Chinese painting. From the "Doctor of the Five Classics" of the Han Dynasty to the Qianjia School in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, it was the period of traditional Chinese "classics", but from Luo Zhenyu and Wang Guowei to Hu Shi and Feng Youlan, they absorbed Western archaeology, materialist views of history and philosophical history to study and interpret Chinese classics, which absorbed Western classics and can officially be defined as "Guoxue". The difference between classics and sinology lies in whether they have absorbed Western methodologies, that is, Wang Guowei and Luo Zhenyu used archaeological methods to study oracle bones, and Hu Shi and Feng Youlan used the category of philosophical history to explain the history of Chinese thought, which was the beginning of a new sinology.
In the same way, the distinction between the "southern painting" or literati painting after the Song and Yuan dynasties and the "new Chinese painting" later called "New Chinese Painting" by Gao Qifeng and Xu Beihong lies in whether the ink has absorbed the method of Western painting, and if the method of Western painting is absorbed, it belongs to the category of "Chinese painting". From this perspective, the emergence of the term "Chinese painting" represents the process of modernity in ink painting in the 20th century. This process can be divided into two stages, the first is from Xu Beihong's realism to Lin Fengmian's expressionism, which is the modern transformation of Chinese painting; secondly, the modernism of ink painting in the 1980s and 1990s, this stage is the transformation from "Chinese painting" to realism and expressionism to abstract expressionism and experimental ink painting of comprehensive materials.
Yan Yinhong, "In a Strange Place"
Although there are works that imitate abstract expressionism or formalism, in the 1980s and 1990s, they gradually moved out of the category of "new Chinese painting" that applied Western law and moved towards the "ink painting" of modernist colors. I would like to refer to the modernist tendencies of the 1980s and 1990s as "modern ink painting" rather than "Chinese painting". Because this stage re-looks at ink painting from the two perspectives of modernism, one is the relationship between abstract expressionism and calligraphy, looking at the formalism of ink painting, that is, the practice of Motherwell and Klein's American Abstract Expressionist calligraphy school; the other is the physical experiment of ink painting and integrated media, which not only reduces ink to neutral materials, but also combines with kneading paper, mixing laundry detergent, and deviceization, which is the method from Rauschenberg to Tapies.
Oriental Tu Qin", "Tang Dynasty Writing - Ink Painting Practice Series No. 9"
He Weina, Endangered Species IV
The modernity of the above two kinds of ink painting is, of course, a reference vision based on abstract expressionism and painting of comprehensive materials, but it is no longer an image method that copies the Western painting system, but a modernist Orientalist practice based on calligraphy and mediativity, which goes beyond the nationalism of images in the sense of "Chinese painting".
The modernism of ink painting in the 1980s and 1990s, which provided an idea of ink modernity, that is, the literati connotation of ink painting was zeroed out and turned into a neutral material, from the perspective of the medium of materials, seeking the underdeveloped parts of the ink tradition, such as the relationship between water and paper, ink accumulation or smudging, to be further expanded. From realism, expressionism, and abstract expressionism to experiments with synthetic materials, this process can be classified as the modernity of 20th-century ink painting. It establishes a fundamental modernity perspective, with formalism, expressionism, abstract art, and the media experimentation of language as hallmarks of modern art or modern painting. The four discussions on Chinese painting in the 20th century were filled with an ideology of scientism and modernism, viewing realism as an advanced scientific method and abstract expressionism as a formal feature of avant-garde, dominating the way of thinking of ink modernity in the early and late 20th centuries.
This raises the question of whether China has ever produced pure "modernity" in the Western sense. It is worth re-examining that modernism includes three main forms of formalism, expressionism and surrealism as a sign of modernity in Western art. Or as an indicator of art history in the category of "modernity". But this formal symbol is not entirely appropriate as a criterion for Chinese or Asian art history.
From the perspective of Chinese or Asian art history, it is regarded as a form of Western modernism, which arose as early as the "big freehand" period of the late Ming Dynasty. This means that we need to re-examine the "modernity" of late Ming art. Surrealism is found in the 17th-century miniature paintings of Hinduism, and in Buddhist art and in the late Ming Dynasty's Bada, Shi Tao, Xu Wei, and Gong Xian's "big freehand" is expressionism. The song, Yuan, and late Ming ink paintings, the boneless brushwork, and the ink method that expresses the lotus flower, although the language of this pen and ink itself, although not to the extreme of formalism, has a partial abstraction that predates the West by three hundred years.
Liu Tianyu,"Deep in the Flowers" (Triptych)
Modern ink painting in the 1980s and 1990s, which is considered heavily influenced by Western modernism, can be seen as a branch of cross-cultural practice. The modernity of ink painting is defined primarily by abstract formalism, expressionism, and conceptual art as a frame of reference. But beyond this stage and further ahead, ink painting really broke away from the literati painting system and began to enter a radical change, which began in the late Ming Dynasty, and even in the Qing Dynasty, this change was carried out uninterruptedly.
From Gao Jianfu to Xu Beihong, ink painting was defined as a kind of 'new Chinese painting', which held that on the basis of the medium means of ink painting, the center of gravity of ink painting should be shifted to the scientism of the object structure and the theme of the times. Prior to the "New National Painting", ink painting took the lead in setting off a modern revolution in Japan, with Okakura Tenshin, Hengshan Taikan, Takeuchi Shuho and others absorbing the impressionist effect of light and fog and the minimalist "Japanese painting".
From Xu Beihong's realistic theme paintings in the mid-1930s to ink propaganda paintings and the "New Zhejiang School" in the 1950s and 1960s, the realist transformation of ink paintings occupied the mainstream. Lin Fengmian's expressionist modernism of pictorial colors and figures in the 1930s was paused for 30 years, and then restarted after the late 1970s, that is, the ink experiments of abstraction, expressionism and conceptual art in the 1980s and 1990s. This phase also includes the modernism of calligraphy influenced by modern Japanese calligraphy.
Both the realist transformation of ink painting and the orientalism of modernism can be attributed to the category of ink modernity in the 20th century. In the 1920s, Gao Jianfu and others proposed the concept of "new Chinese painting", which placed modern ink painting in the "modernity" of cultural representationism, while modern ink painting in the 1980s and 1990s tried to develop a branch of Orientalism from modernism. After 2000, ink exploration, absorbing the forms of conceptual art, installation art and new media art, actually still follows the "modernity" vision from realism to modernism, and serves as a branch of post-war contemporary art under the name of "contemporary ink painting".
After the modernity of ink painting, there are two unresolved theoretical crux of the matter, one is how does ink return to the core main line of late enlightenment or modernity, and how can it supplement a more open form under the vision of this main line? Second, how to redefine the zen-like system of ink painting, and its core relationship between the supra-anachronism and the epochality?
(Serial)
Zhu Qi, Doctor of Art, famous art critic, independent curator, researcher of the Theory Department of the National Academy of Painting, director of the China Literary and Art Critics Association. An independent curator of contemporary art representative of the post-60s generation, he has curated a series of important avant-garde art exhibitions since 1990 and has published a large number of influential art criticisms and academic papers in the domestic and foreign media. He was the executive editor of Sculpture magazine and the artistic director of 798 Art District, and founded the first interdisciplinary course of contemporary art in China, "19-story Space Contemporary Art Advanced Seminar".