Gao Shiming

The Crisis of Landscape

Gao Shiming

What we see reflected in twentieth-century Chinese shanshui (ink landscape) painting is the destruction and chaos wrought upon the natural landscape by the century’s civilizational conflicts, and the resulting pandemonium of symbols and images. Xu Longsen seeks to restore some kind of order to shanshui from within this chaotic and broken state. In his monumental compositions, his gaze looks far into the past, to the dense mists and the boundless primeval darkness at the beginning of time, when Heaven and Earth came into being Within this monumentality of scale, the forms, patterns and connotations of brush painting all undergo a fundamental change.

Xu Longsen has revived the cardinal virtues of Chinese painting—the qualities of being forceful and unrestrained, open-hearted and expansive. Over a period of five centuries, the presence of these qualities in Chinese painting was gradually diminished under the dual impact of the literati ‘studio culture’ of the Ming and Qing periods, and the modern art academy. In Xu Longsen’s creative process, these qualities have been recaptured and revitalized.

For Xu, the total experience of his art is not only a question of what Zong Bing (style name Zong Shaowen, 375-443) described as ‘spiritual’ travel–entering into the realm of a landscape painting through quiet contemplation–but also a question of the way Xu Longsen actively responds to the public space.

What contemporary artists must face is no longer an era in which art was appreciated by ‘two like-minded souls sharing their thoughts in a hut in the wilderness,’ as the literary scholar Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) put it, but rather an era in which art is seen within the cacophony of a public space. The art of landscape painting must confront the new reality of mammoth exhibition spaces shared with a plethora of other media, with the implication that all kinds of artistic practices are now being integrated into the public culture of contemporary society. Xu Longsen’s monumental landscapes thus constitute a kind of proactive practice through which a contemporary shanshui painter has taken on the challenges presented by the cacophonous public space of today’s exhibition venues.

The monumental scale of Xu Longsen’s shanshui painting is not the only element that sets his works apart from tradition: there is also a fundamental change taking place within the painting process itself. The imposing and powerful structure of his landscapes requires an almost military level of tactical planning, as well as a disciplined physical control balanced by an active and vital spirit, in order to achieve the creative momentum required to execute and display these monumental vistas. The Dao of painting is the Dao of change. We do not live and create in a vacuum, but rather in a social reality defined by public space. This social reality has already profoundly changed the way we experience and think about our world. Xu Longsen has said that, for Chinese landscape painters, this era of public space is both a daunting challenge and a new opportunity given by history. If the culture of the scholar’s studio encouraged the literati to cling to a belief in the implicit beauty power contained within simplicity, as expressed in the poem by Liu Yuxi (772 – 842): ‘Mountains need not be high to be famous, if immortals dwell there/Waters need not be deep to be enchanted, if dragons live within’; then what the art of calligraphy must seek as it enters this age of public space is a state of mind which accepts the grand scale, in which ‘no mountain is too high, and no ocean is too deep’. To achieve this state of mind requires not only a deeply felt experience of the ‘mountains and water’ of nature, but also a willingness to engage in a profound reflection on the culture of shanshui painting, and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the nature of shanshui itself.

Through his landscape practice Xu Longsen constructs his own primeval world: and even though the elements of nature illuminated within this world are part of a communal environment, Xu’s realm of landscape is completely different from those realms created by traditional landscape artists, which can be ‘roamed through and inhabited’. In contrast, Xu’s landscapes loom before the viewer as remote, amorphous scenes anchored in quiet and solitude: these are realms that do not invite entry. Perhaps Xu Longsen’s intention is to subvert the Confucian notion that ‘The wise love the the water; the benevolent enjoy the mountains’. Instead, perhaps what Xu seeks to create is a kind of response that is in keeping with the Daoist concept that ‘Heaven and Earth are not benevolent: they treat all creatures as straw dogs’ (i.e. insignificant)[1]. The creative forces of Heaven and Earth follow the ‘method’ of Nature, and the ‘method’ of ‘Nature’ goes beyond ‘the joys of benevolence and wisdom’: it is no more nor less than the eternal cycle of birth and decay.

In his ‘Letter to Zhu Yuansi’, the Southern Dynasties scholar Wu Jun (469-520) wrote: Those who aspired to honour and fame and wished to fly as high as eagles would have their minds settled in peace when looking at these elevated peaks. Those who were engaged in mundane affairs would loiter there with no thought of return when gazing at these valleys.[2]

Today when we gaze into a realm of landscape, can it be that what we seek as its essential nature is still no more than the pleasure of spiritual roaming and rarefied communal enjoyment?

                                                 (Translation by Valerie C. Doran)

[1] This quotation is from Chapter 5 of the Daodejing: 天地不仁，以萬物為芻狗

[2] Translation of excerpt from Wu Jun’s ‘Letter to Zhu Yuansi’ by Xie Baikui, see http://www.en84.com/article-7957-1.html

《山水的危機》

高士明

在二十世紀的山水畫面上所呈現的，是文明衝突中山河的破碎與擾亂，是一個符號與意象的亂世。徐龍森欲在此山水之離亂中重新理出次序，在巨大的畫面上再次追憶起天地初開之際的浩瀚冥漠、氤氳盤礡。這紀念碑式的水墨巨制中，筆墨的形態、法式與意蘊產生了根本性的變化。

徐龍森復興了中國畫的重要品格：雄渾而恣肆，磊落而曠達，在過去的五百餘年中，這些品格已經因明清的書齋化、近代的學院化而漸趨淪喪。而在徐龍森的創作中，這種品格的重新獲得，不止因為他對於宗少文所說的“坐究四荒”的觀覽境界的追摹；而且在於他對當代公共空間的積極回應。當代的畫家所要應對的，不再是“荒江野老”，也不再是書齋中的“二兩素心人”，而是一個喧囂的公共空間的時代。在這個時代，山水畫所面對的是與其他媒介共用的巨大的展示空間，另一方面也意味著，在今天，所有的藝術實踐都被整合在當代社會的公共文化之中。徐龍森的巨幅山水創作，可以被視為當代國畫家應對當代公共空間的一種積極的實踐。

徐龍森的巨幅作品，不止於形制之變，在畫面中有某些更為根本的東西改變了。氣勢雄渾的格局不但需要如履薄冰的經營，更需要發願與籌謀， 列兵佈陣的兵法；繪畫狀態不但要“官知止而神欲行”，也要求“批大郤，導大窾”的魄力和能量；同時，能為如此巨幅，依託的不只是“胸中意趣”，更要有“胸中丘壑”與“胸中”。畫之道乃易之道，我們在當前的社會公共空間中生活和創作著，這一現實已經深刻地改變了我們的經驗與思想。徐龍森深信，這個公共空間的時代是歷史給山水畫家的一個巨大挑戰，同時也是一次重大的機遇，如果說書齋文化蒙養了“山不在高，有仙則靈；水不在深，有龍則靈”的文人寄託和情致；那麼，進入公共空間時代的書法藝術所要追求的，則是“山不厭高，海不厭深”的宏大境界。欲達到這一境界，不但需要對於山川造化的深切體驗，還需要對於中國山水文化的深刻判斷以及對於山水意興的細膩體驗。

徐龍森的山水實踐是他一個人的洪荒世界，雖然其中映射出所有人的山河歲月，但他的山水卻絕非傳統山水畫講求的“可游可居之境”，山水寂泊茫昧，拒絕人的進入。徐龍森的野心，或許是要顛覆“仁者樂山，智者樂水”的儒教精神，他所要做的，或許是對“天地不仁，以萬物為芻狗”的一種應和。天地造化皆以自然為“法”，而“自然”之“法”卻恰恰超出“仁智之樂”，那是創造與衰朽的永恆輪回。南朝吳均《與朱元思書》中說到：“鳶飛戾天者，望峰息心；經綸世務者，窺穀忘反。”今日視之，山水之要義又豈止在於臥遊暢神、煙雲供養？