A few days ago, Zeng Chenggang, a famous sculptor and professor of the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, delivered a keynote speech at the "Humanistic Tsinghua Forum". Starting from his more than 40 years of exploration of sculpture art, he explored what kind of path Chinese contemporary artists should take between traditional Chinese culture and Western modern art. The following is the main content of the speech.
Zeng Chenggang's "Sculpture on the Theme of the Great Unity of the Chinese Nation" (Xinhua News Agency)
"Go to the library and eat Western food"
At first, I didn't know what sculpture was. Entering the sculpture department of the university to study is also purely accidental.
I loved drawing as a child. When I was 13 years old, I began to learn painting, my teacher was in Pingyang, Wenzhou, 10 miles from the town where I lived, and I took a boat to learn painting every week. At that time, I had only seen comic strips, I didn't know sketches, I hadn't seen plaster figures, I just wanted to draw. Reading at school is often distracting, the teacher is lecturing, I am drawing my drawings. At that time, I felt that I must be a painter in this life.
In 1977, when the college entrance examination was resumed, I applied for the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (the predecessor of the China Academy of Art). At that time, the candidates recruited were all one in a thousand, and the age difference was very large. I just graduated from high school and was only 18 years old. Fortunately, the next year I was admitted to the undergraduate program of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. At that time, I was taking the printmaking department, but the printmaking department was full of students, and the teacher asked me if I could transfer to the sculpture department, I had no idea what the sculpture department was for, and I thought that as long as I could enter the Academy of Fine Arts, anything could be done. In this way, I began my career as a sculptor.
The Sculpture Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts was the first sculpture department of a Higher Art School in China, which was established in 1928, when many teachers like Li Jinfa and Liu Kaiqu returned from studying in France, and later under the influence of the Soviet Union, they slowly formed a realistic creation tradition of realism, and their works were basically clay sculptures. At that time, the economy of our country was still very backward, and clay sculptures could only be made of plaster statues, and even the cast bronze sculptures were very few. When I was an undergraduate, the teacher taught realistic works such as reliefs of the Monument to the People's Heroes in the classroom, and the creation was also imitating these works.
After the reform and opening up, culture has also opened up. At that time, there was a fund of 800,000 yuan to build the building, which was a very large amount of money, but Vice President Wang Dewei said that the building was no longer built, and he used the money to buy a large number of exquisite Western albums. After these albums arrived at school, they caused a sensation, and we called going to the library to see these albums "eating Western food". The various genres and styles of the West, from modernism to minimalism, are very different from the realism we learn in the classroom, which greatly broadens our horizons.
"The Inspiration of Bronzes"
After graduating from university, I was assigned to work in Zhejiang Dongyang Ceramics Factory and Shaoxing Garden Management Office, but those places did not have my place to use. I insisted on taking the graduate school for 6 consecutive years, and finally got my wish.
After I was admitted to graduate school, I wanted to take back the time that had been delayed in these years. I was in a state where I worked day and night from Monday to Friday, eating and sleeping in the studio. On the weekend, when I went back to my home in Shaoxing, the train drove for 2 hours, and I drew a manuscript on the train. The way I create is not to finish one sculpture and then make another, but to put a row of shelves in front of me and make several pieces at the same time, and the mud is calculated one bucket truck after another.
Artistically, I stared at the bronzes. This is the art that has had the deepest impact on me in my life. At that time, I was so fascinated by bronzes that I almost read all the bronze albums. I also went to Xi'an and Shanghai, where the exhibits of Shang zhou bronzes are the most abundant. Later, wherever bronzes appeared, I ran to wherever I went.
I think that bronze is beyond the concept of the container, its internal structure, volume, tension are very shocking, with the same meaning as the essence of sculpture. Another attraction to bronzes is the calm and powerful ornamental lines, which are completely stylized and standardized, and I call this line "bronze line". The straight and turning lines, full of divine rhythm and rhythm of life, show a posture of vigor and a sublime and solemn atmosphere. In my opinion, the ornamental lines of bronze are not the formal beauty and decorative beauty of the general pattern pattern, but the condensation of natural divine power, which is a "meaningful form" in the true sense. That's what bronzes taught me.
"Jian Hu Sanjie"
In 1989, when I was still in graduate school, I made a very important sculpture that year, "Three Masters of Jianhu Lake". This work won the gold medal in the sculpture category of the 7th National Art Exhibition. The National Art Exhibition is held every five years and is known as the "Olympics of the Art World", and unexpectedly, I won the gold medal the first time I participated. "Jian Hu Sanjie" shows three legendary historical figures in Shaoxing, Qiu Jin, Tao Chengzhang and Xu Xilin. In the early stages, I studied a lot of materials and was deeply affected by their life stories. After I actually started creating, I poured all my strength into the studio for a whole month, all in one go. This work has the charm of bronze and the lines are very simple. Because of this work, the sculpture industry knows that there is a Zeng Chenggang; and because of this work, I began to have confidence in myself.
As a graduate student, I also created the Genie Series and the Liangshan Good Man Series, each with a bronze-like simplicity, tension and structure. Bronze is full of robust, thick, ancient temperament, as well as the domineering spirit of brute courage, which is the expression of the vitality and spiritual temperament of a nation. Each of my works is a pursuit of this temperament and spirit.
Eventually, I completed graduate school in two and a half years. At the graduation exhibition, I made a total of 32 works, which was a sensation in the school.
The Mantis of the Genie Series
"Two works got me out of trouble"
After graduating from graduate school, I stayed on to teach. I had the opportunity to go to Europe as a visiting scholar, so I went to the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts in Italy, which is one of the oldest in the world.
In addition to studying, I began to travel around Europe. To save money, I went to the museum during the day and took the train to the next city at night, running from Italy to France, from France to England, and from England to Spain. Walking city by city, I was "dazzled".
What struck me the most was Michelangelo's group of sculptures for the Medici family cemetery, "Morning", "Twilight", "Day", "Night". This is completely different from the sculptures I usually see in the album, the human body of the sculpture is completely beyond the normal concept and scale, with a kind of divine power. Michelangelo once said: "My sculpture is compared to Greek sculpture, greek sculpture rolling down the mountain will shatter, my sculpture will not be broken." "His sculptures really seem to have vitality, an incredible power.
Before going abroad, I was confident and felt that my sculptures were already great. But when I came to Europe and saw so many outstanding works of art, I was deeply shocked and felt so small. I even wondered: Do I want to continue making sculptures?
After returning home, I was in a state of aphasia for a long time and felt that I could not find hope. In the process of hard thinking, there are two works that have brought me out of my predicament.
The first work is "Dan Xin Faithful Soul", which was created for the Shanghai Longhua Martyrs Memorial Hall. This piece is very large, consisting of five large walls, with a total area of 365 square meters. The relief uses a realistic-based symbolic expression technique, combining a large number of vertical lines with the virtual reality of the block surface to form an overall effect like an iron wall of copper walls. The second work is "Ancient Chinese Myths and Legends" created for the Wenzhou Museum, which is also a large relief work, which is 16 meters high and took 3 years to complete.
With these two creations, I think I'm okay. Whether it is the subject matter, volume, or production, Chinese sculptors also have the ability to complete high-quality works of art. I am proud to say that I can also make Western artists feel the weight of Chinese artists.
"Liangshan Good Man Series" "Walker Wu Song"
"The Modern Transformation of Traditional Sculptural Language"
In 2001, I came to Tsinghua University. At this stage, I think we should sort it out and clarify our creative direction.
Once, the art theorist Sun Zhenhua asked me: "In today's art pattern, there are avant-garde, there are traditions, and each person has its own positioning. What is your positioning for your own art? I thought about it for half a day and said, "If I want to position myself, then I'm guarding the midfield." ”
Modern sculpture in China learns from the Western tradition of classicism, for example, by introducing Western principles of perspective into our paintings and the study of human anatomy into our classrooms. For more than 100 years, the training of realism in China's academies of fine arts has followed this path. Western modern art, on the other hand, does not engage in perspective, but learns from our Eastern traditions, and works move from perspective to flat. This change is very interesting. In fact, eastern and western art can complement each other, they have places to learn from us, we also have places to learn from them, learn from each other, integrate with each other, art can move forward. The "midfield" I am talking about is not to exclude the art of all periods in the East and the West, and to absorb it in all directions, so as to establish its own artistic style. That is to say, we must take the third way, which is neither to copy tradition nor purely imitate Western modern art, but to inherit, transform and create Eastern and Western culture and art.
I propose a clear direction, that is, the modern transformation of the traditional sculptural language. First, Chinese sculpture art must be based on China and create based on Chinese culture; second, it is necessary to emphasize the maternal significance of traditional sculpture language and emphasize the continuation and development of tradition; third, in the process of modernization, traditional Chinese sculpture must have its own modernity in language, must be transformed into a Modern Form of Chinese style, and cannot blindly imitate the West.
In order to realize the modern transformation of traditional sculpture language, the art of different regions and cultures can be learned, and this reference is to inherit the classics, develop, create, and transform on the basis of inheritance, and to base itself on the contemporary, with the goal of leading to the future of the world.
What is Successful Sculpture
For a while, people were dissatisfied with the sculptures in public spaces. Indeed, some artists are irresponsible and turn sculpture into work, these inferior sculptures are called "vegetable sculptures", and ordinary people often comment on which is the "ugliest sculpture". Over the past many years, we have paid a lot of tuition, and some of the lessons have been painful. How to eliminate visual waste and prevent urban sculptures from being demolished and demolished? To solve this problem, it is necessary to let quality works enter the public space.
I have been practicing and exploring in this regard. My first public sculpture, Dancing, was created for Tongling City, Anhui Province. Tongling is the place where bronzes are produced, and I happened to study bronzes, so I turned a knight cup into a dancing style. This work later became the symbol of Tongling.
Relay of the Sacred Flame is 8 meters high and is located in the Beijing Olympic Park, directly in front of the Bird's Nest. "Great Undertakings" was placed in front of the Exhibition Hall of the History of the Communist Party of China, which was created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. The large-scale sculpture "Moonlight" is located in the Yinhe Park in Yantai, Shandong Province, with a height of nearly 40 meters, and four large cranes were used to place it.
Relay of the Flame
"Lotus Series" is my rethinking of traditional culture. Lotus is considered pure and full of vitality in Chinese culture, but lotus is very bitter, how to use sculpture to re-trigger people's philosophical thinking about lotus? I enlarged the size of the lotus and tore it apart, so that the lotus was no longer monotonous under the form of withering and cracking, and changed the style with light and shadow, enriching the aesthetic connotation of the lotus. I chose mirror stainless steel as the material of the Lotus Series, because the material itself can express a mood, thus achieving the organic unity of gentleness and masculinity in style.
Over the years, I have also actively promoted the construction of the sculpture park. Why do you do a sculpture park? Because it solves the problem of beautification of the urban environment, it also solves the dilemma of urban sculpture development. In the past 10 years, we have built 6 sculpture parks in 6 cities, and more than 600 works have landed, all of which are large sculptures of more than 5 meters, covering more than 30,000 mu of public space.
I believe that only sculptures that are recognized by the government, the public, artists and the environment are truly successful. For example, Wuhu Sculpture Park is highly praised by Gechu Aixiliman, chairman of the International Federation of Sculpture Parks, and is considered to be in the top five of the world's sculpture parks. The construction mode of Wuhu Sculpture Park is the government setting up a stage, expert review, artist singing, through the holding of several "Liu Kaiqu Award" international sculpture exhibitions, turning a wasteland into a very high-quality art park, so that the environment and sculpture are closely integrated.
"Why We Need Sculpture"
In 2012, "Crossing - Zeng Chenggang Sculpture Exhibition" was held in Germany.
Every year, wolfgang, a famous German curator, looks for artists from all over the world to participate in the annual exhibition of the German Northern Art Festival, which is a world-renowned festival annual exhibition. Wolfgang went to China to see my work and asked if I could do an exhibition in Germany. I spent a year preparing and finally selected 3 themes with a total of 26 works.
The exhibition is named "crossing", which has several meanings: first, the exhibition is held in Germany, which is the exchange between Chinese sculpture art and the world, and is a leap in spatial distance; second, this batch of works is composed of 3 themes, namely the character-themed "Great Enlightener", the animal-themed "Genie Series" and the plant-themed "Lotus", which embodies the Chinese aesthetic conception of the unity of heaven and earth; the third is that the sculpture works are infinite, can resist the erosion of the wind and frost of the years, and can also face the vast and boundless future.
The exhibition was a success, and Richard Brixor, president of the Swedish Sculpture Society, said after seeing the exhibition: "I originally thought that Chinese sculpture was a copy of the West, and after seeing Professor Zeng's works, it was completely his personal creation." I can't imagine that there are such works in China at present, which is very shocking! ”
"The Great Awakener" was created by me for the 100th anniversary of Tsinghua University. I have put together several outstanding thinkers in Chinese history to express a kind of reflection on mankind and the future. I feel that they will always be beacons of our spirit and our minds, whether past, present or future.
Finally, I would like to answer a fundamental question: "What is sculpture?" Sculpture is a creation that occupies physical space and has an emotional aesthetic, and can coexist with heaven and earth. Why do we need sculpture? Because sculpture is the need for human survival, the need for human historical records, and the need for the development of human civilization. As long as humans exist, sculpture will always exist and will not disappear.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Text Editor: Xu Bei Image Editor: Shao Jing
Source: Author: Zeng Chenggang