Parody and Loneliness (2009)

YUAN Jinhua is an academic ink painter, isn’t he?
 

In my memory, domestic art institutions usually award as high as master degree to the students major in painting techniques. But now YUAN Jinhua is a PhD student of the Chinese painting department in the China Academy of Fine Art, which makes me cannot help thinking what artistic accomplishments and realm he would achieve during his PhD study, and how these accomplishments would be integrated into his personality and finally be presented in his artworks. Certainly, at the moment I am not clear whether YUAN Jinhua purchase this PhD degree in the field of Chinese art history and theory or in the field of art education. I shall stop asking these questions so that I will not consider his PhD status as a kind of known pre-understanding so that to avoid over-interpretation on his paintings. In fact, without knowing much of his academia status can help me concentrating on his work purely from the point of visual appreciation, and fleeing from the pre-understanding theory by Hans-Georg Gadamer, a German philosopher on the method of hermeneutics. This is also because ink paintings themselves are already windows of painters’ self-presentation.
 

It means when I interpret YUAN Jinhua’s artworks, I lack of the pre-understanding of his background. In other words, theoretically, the painter is only presented by his works on site while his personal information is absent. In my opinion, it is a reasonable and justifiable way for art critique with the absence of personal background, as his knowledge and background inevitably penetrates into the paintings as a part of aesthetics by the aid of ink and water. 
 

Looking at YUAN Jinhua’s ink paintings, it is obvious that he is such a painter that he uses the simplest lines and shapes to demonstrate his own philosophy and thoughts. Since 2008, YUAN Jinhua submitted the series titled “Embrace” consisting of 44 ink paintings. These paintings show a strong visual coherence in terms of theme, structure, colour, technique, style and image. They also present YUAN Jinhua’s insisting on a conscious creation with an explicit theme in the entire working process, which is also the reason for considering him as an academic ink painter. YUAN stated that in his series “Embrace”, the character “抱” as a Chinese monosyllabic symbol compress but completely express all the meanings of the two-syllable word “拥抱” (hugs, embrace) in the modern Chinese. Indeed, in time of oracle and bronze tripods, all Chinese characters appeared as monosyllabic words. With the same origin, the Chinese ink paintings have been influenced dramatically and express themselves in a simple visual way, which makes Chinese ink paintings distinctive to western paintings. YUAN using one character “抱” to entitle this series instead of the modern word “拥抱” indicates his self-consciousness and thoughts behind his paintings as simplism. 
 

We notice that YUAN has been trained as an academic ink painters, as his series “Embrace” was completed under his own self-consciousness, and followed the statement he gave in “The Ink Declaration of a Painter” that “When I was painting, the theme of embrace occupied my entire mind of art and fully filled the circumstance around me. Embrace represents the spiritual value of the unity between men and universe. This value has been developed since Song Dynasty, and has been expressed in paintings, calligraphies and even poems. This value, simultaneously, has been inherited as the essence of Chinese culture.” Through embrace and this series, YUAN achieved the unity between art and thoughts, and let this unity permeated in his paintings. He also explicitly pointed out that the embrace that he expressed in his works differs from a trivializing affection behaviours between men and women, but was full of the spirits and values of this man-universe unity, which pass the essences of Chinese traditional culture through generations in the form of images and paintings in the history of China.
 

YUAN introduced this traditional culture and unity in his ink paintings “Embrace”, and express his understandings through these 44 pieces of paintings. Therefore, his Embrace series demonstrates a long-run consistency of visual images with simplicity: the simplicity of the expression of understandings and thoughts—the unity of man and university; the simplicity of the structure—the still mountains and rocks and the flowing water; and the simplicity of characters—the combination of the characters in each single embrace.  
 

In my opinion, when average painters present the abstract concept of unity between man and universe via traditional Chinese ink paintings, they usually exaggerate the complication of the combination among the visual elements in their painting to depict the philosophy behind the unity concept. These phenomena can be tracked back to the philosophy in the ancient time when ZhuangZi proposed that: “The heaven and earth create everything. They unite together as a whole while their separation is the beginning of the world.” In Han Dynasty, a Confucian named DONG Zhongshu wrote in his work that: “The so-called morality is the interaction and unity between man and universe: they can be integrated together as a whole; they can follow each other, benefit each other, and interact with each other.” The unity between man and universe has been contributing a lot to the Chinese traditional culture. However, Chinese philosophy distinguishes itself as simple and abstract, which determines the feature of traditional Chinese ink paintings in the same direction inevitably. In the series of Embrace, YUAN Jinhua only chose mountain, water, and man, as main visual elements to structure his own concept of unity between man and universe in his ink paintings with minimalism. 
 

It is necessary to interpret furthermore that the mountain and water in YUAN’s ink paintings are the metaphor for the presence of universe and nature. In the traditional culture of China, mountains are representative of motionlessness, while water stands for movements. These motionlessness and movements contain and demonstrate the universe and nature unlimitedly. YUAN located his embracing figures within these mountains and waters to complete his visual expression of the unity between men and universe at the philosophy level.

For years, when appreciating or reviewing Chinese ink paintings, critiques always wishfully attribute the 2-dimension aesthetics of Chinese ink paintings to the poetry of Daoism and Zen. Some say experience that the painters always roam and swing in the image depicted by ink paintings; and some others say meditation that painters always think and reflect in the perception of ink paintings. In fact, these statements are not enough to present the relations between painters and ink paintings; and moreover, Chinese ink paintings also inherit the characteristics of massivity, plainness, and honesty from Confucian culture. When looking at YUAN’s series of Embrace, we can perceive the disclosing of experience and meditation, and what is more, the effort that YUAN’s striving to reach the poetic level proposed by Confucian within a visual harmony. Confucian said “Wises delight in the water, while benevolent delight in the mountains. Wises act while benevolent keep still. Wises obtain happiness while benevolent with longevity.” Viewed at the aspect of Confucian aesthetics, mountains are distant and stable that can be loaded up; which waters are flowing and poised that represent delicate and tolerance. Either wise or benevolent is inevitably able to find its own residence through mountains and waters. 

YUAN’s painting technique in the series Embrace is simple and honest. His simplicity and honesty differs from those of the Chinese traditional paintings by literati. YUAN not only simplified delicatebrushworks but also the shapes and profiles of mountains and waters, the embraced or embracing figures, and the delight experience in the entire harmony.
 

In his Ink Declaration of A Painter, YUAN Jinhua considered himself as a hidden inhabitant in the post-digital age metropolis, dwelling in the ink painting world, fighting and releasing his worries and anxiety caused by the post-industrial culture and society via the imagination of a ink painting utopia. Confronting the reality, YUAN confessed his anxiety: “The current society is materialistic with battles, pollution, humanity…, all of which I concern very much. These issues also make me frustrated and desperate. I am always struggling in the questions whether or not the harmonious relations still exist between man and man, and between men and nature. I also wonder if we can treat men and nature with a positive attitude as hugs and embraces.” I have no idea whether or not YUAN had recognized that in the series of Embrace, he already illustrated and translated the wise and benevolent into the embracing / embraced figures in the background of mountains and waters. 
 

The Analects as a collection of Confucian’s words point out the equivalence between wise and benevolent. Here, the question is what can be considered as benevolent. XU Shen in Han Dynasty explained that benevolent was a kind of intimate connections among people. The word benevolent in Chinese means the emotions and harmony between two people originally. YUAN’s paintings compressed this emotion and intimate relations to a scheme of harmony and balance, and finally expressed this scheme in his simple and honest embraces among figures in the context of mountains and waters. Under the circumstance of the post-industrial society, YUAN proposed the harmony and balance attributed by the peacefulness that is born by the simplicity of the post-industrial society, rather than the delicate and uniform produced by high-tech in the post-digital industry. Certainly, there is a logical sequence. The peacefulness is resulted into the unify between men and universe; this unify is resulted into harmony; the harmony connects to benevolent, and this benevolent among people is translated into beloved relations with understanding, recognizing, and  interacting among people, all of which can be summarized as the expected highest ethics level in the nowadays’ post-modern society. It is obvious that each single person needs to be loved or love others. However, I have no idea whether or not the benevolent in The Analects can be used as a solution for the lack of social belief and ethics in this post-modern society. However, the heaven, earth, men and their embrace together in YUAN’s painting reveal certain poetic characteristics of Confucian, which enriches the philosophic meanings of the paintings. Therefore, when we are looking at YUAN’s paintings, we shall not pay much attention to his brushworks and technique, as YUAN has not concentrated and accumulated his knowledge at this aspect.
 

One famous painter named NI Linyun in Yuan Dynasty once searched for inside peacefulness through the tradition ink paintings after experiencing wealth and poverty. He summarized the spiritual home of the traditional literati in China in his article titled as “Appreciation on the portrait of Mr. LIANG Changzhang” that: (literati) dwelled in Confucian, relied on Daoism, and hided in Zen. I completely agree with this statement as it really reflects the final home of the traditional literati, and what’s more, YUAN’s paintings further express his philosophic intention based on integrating all cultural elements of the spiritual home. Hereby, his ink painting broke through the normal critiques in the fields of traditional painting technique or the beauty of impressionistic vision. YUAN focused on his philosophy thoughts while gave up forms or shapes. By doing so, he created his own ink painting form. Consequently, this unrepeatable series Embrace represents a real person as YUAN Jinhua.
 

However, painters cannot escape from their contexts as a globalized post-modern society. The connections and mixtures between traditional Chinese cultures as Confucian, Daoism and Zen and western cultures can be detected in YUAN’s paintings. We have noticed that the men appearing in the series of Embrace were created and parodied as kind of “monk”. Moreover, these monks sometimes wear the typical costumes in Daoism, sometimes wear a kind of Chinese suits that were very popular at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, and sometimes wear nothing while standing and overlaying one another; all of which consist the diversity of embrace. Obviously, we cannot find any beautiful artistic impressions with definitive purposes. On the contrary, YUAN intended to avoid this artistic impressions which appeared in almost all the traditional paintings. He wanted to state a concept of embrace among men as the avant-garde of the contemporary art in a form of abstracted and enhanced visual symbols. The concept art as a form of fine art was introduced and raised in the West in the last century. YUAN salvaged this form from the art of the western world, transformed the elements of this art form via Chinese ink painting technique, and finally synthesize these elements into his own artworks for creating a mixed visual vision. 
 

The word “monk” comes from Sanskrit with the original meanings as respectable masters. In Chinese, two characters are used to express the meaning of this word: one means the unity of gods, humans and spirits; and the other means the superior terminal of the universe. According to these interpretation, only Sakyamuni can be entitled as monk. Although we are not clear if this idea has been also used to compose YUAN’s paintings as well as other elements, these figures and their art forms invented a symbol that can link to the visual style of all YUAN’s ink paintings. Whenever we see these figures, we can judge via this symbol, links and coherence without any doubt and say: Yes, this is YUAN Jinhua!
 

Here is an interesting antinomyphenomenon. When YUAN tried to struggle and smoothen the worries and anxiety caused by the post-industrial culture and post-modern society via his paintings Embrace, he was also a pioneer of conforming the modernism in the West and the post-modern culture together into his ink paintings. Based on this understanding, it is easy to comprehend the reason why in his paintings there are a big amount of intervention elements such as mixtures, collages, decoration, Dada, parodies, and ironies. Since last century when the Modern art was raised, intervention elements become one of the significant labels and symbols in paintings. Take the mail art in the western post-modern art as an example, the artworks might probably be something in the process of delivery, such as a pair of chopsticks, a pile of discs with bubble gum at the edges, a chair used in the school, a bundle offirewood, flattenedbeercans, a piece ofshirt frontandcollar,abowler hat, a shoe, apumpandaradish, etc. In the article “Mail art: Post Modern Art”, the critic John Windsor mentioned one event: After he introduced a sort of forms of Mail Art to his students, Benz had tolerated himself to the embarrass caused by his students making fun of him with Mail Art—he once received a envelop with his dirty comb in it which was stolen by one of the students from his pocket. Such being the case, what else labels or symbols cannot be introduced into YUAN’s post-ink artworks?
 

Viewing from the aesthetic point of essentialism, we first of all agree that YUAN Jinhua is an academic ink painter. Furthermore, we can identify YUAN as an anti-artist who has been transformed from the traditional academic ink painters to provoke the traditions of Chinese ink paintings. This is in my opinion the vanguard indicated in YUAN’s paintings: I am an ink painter; but I have to detach myself from the traditions of Chinese ink paintings and become myself. The only method to make himself detached is to use the influential elements of the western culture and the post-modern art to parody, ridicule, irony, and even provoke, destruct, and subvert the traditions of Chinese ink paintings. The final goal is to build himself as a lonely anti-art artist with essentialism through the technique of ink paintings. The anti-art here we mentioned means being against the art of ink painting. In other words, YUAN is an anti-ink-art ink painter. Or more clearly with the use of the prefixpost-, YUAN Jinhua is a post-ink painter inhabiting in the post-Chinses culture.
 

Indeed, successful artists are usually lonely and are not accepted by the society where they inhabit. However, this is the reason for their vanguard.