内容提要
Time is draining away little by little. Unconsciously we may find life repeating itself with the passing time. Chinese sages instruct us not to be too concerned about trivial things in the world, for no matter how we strive in the material world, life will return to its starting point. Therefore, it may be wise of those who sit still in meditation as a means of facing the world and completing a lifecycle.
Zhou Chunya’s arts training mainly involves woodcarving, pencil drawing, and oil painting, but he refers to ancient painting manuals from time to time, including paintings of Ba Da Shan-ren, of Huang Binhong and landscape painting of the Song Dynasties. He knows well about the above-mentioned principles that give rise to a problem. Shall we govern by doing nothing that goes against nature, or proceed to work hard in the physical world? Either choice seems to be unfit for Zhou Chunya.
Art is supposed to be the reflection of life. The dog Black Root used to arouse the painter’s infinite liberty and vigor, which gave rise to the naissance of numerous Black Roots and green dogs. They rendered the opportunity for Zhou Chunya to free himself from complicated textures and structures. It shows insufficient sensitivity if one is only concerned about changes in subject matters. Zhou Chunya boldly takes over Black Root’s spirit and hopes that he could be filled with its vitality and sensitivity. It explains why green color becomes a symbol of more vigor and less restraint when the brown hue fades away. Zhou Chunya is clear about vigor, so he uses red when necessary. Meanwhile, the latent vigor leads him to lessen the application of heavy strokes and colors. What matters is not the thickness of colors, strength of stokes, or how that dog or those dogs are vividly delineated. Zhou Chunya has already surpassed the contemplation over the expressiveness of paintings. The choice in styles has become an issue of little interest as well. In his liberal depiction of green dogs, Zhou Chunya has freed himself from issues like symbols, layouts, styles and even expressions. Judged from the deliberate but still natural brushwork, the painter has reached the stage of purposeless painting.
We would then drive out of town for dinner, talking about arts and news in arts arena. While leafing through albums of paintings, we might look out of the window or examine the completed and to-be-completed works on the wall. We would sit in a pub, envisioning the future or telling about recent schedules. Anyway, there was no modernist systematicness and no anxiety over theoretical issues. Once on impulse, we would fly to Shanghai or mild Lijiang. In this way, swirling petals and green leaves gradually emerged on the canvas until one day branches of peach blossomed out right before our eyes.
Westerners are not used to aimless games despite Kant’s notion of “purposeless”. When did peach flowers first come into Zhou’s paintings? In 1997 when peach flowers played just foil to green dogs, which revealed a different state of mind? There is no arguing that peach blossom has appeared in Zhou Chunya’s paintings since 2004. We wonder whether the dogs have run away or just look back at the peach trees in the distance. Anyway Zhou’s paintings have turned into a paradise of peach flowers.
Zhou Chunya’s peach blossoms can hardly be defined with any modernist terminology or post-modernist concept. Language is too impoverished to delineate an image. Critics serve to arouse the awareness, so when talking about how peach blossoms became a subject matter, we don’t have to rely on familiar terminologies.
We could imagine Fan Kuan’s (a famous painter in the Song Dynasty) life when he retired into the remote mountain He sat there all day, stretching his eyes all around and enjoying whatever of interest to him. Even at snowy nights, he had got to stroll back and forth contemplating until enlightening ideas occurred to him. What he wished to envision or experience was a kind of mentality. Though he is widely recognized as a realist hermit in the Song Dynasty, he yearned for the delight and inspiration from nature rather than rocks or gurgling water. We should not refer to Su Dongpo’s interpretation, for Dongpo himself had conflicting concepts and he could hardly account for the verifiable boundary between form and meaning. With some knowledge about Chinese culture and tradition, nevertheless, we may partially understand Su Shi. A painter is of liberal mind if he drops his paintbrush. It can be generalized that mentality is independent of the tools we use. Even a line left behind a rough twig could help to reveal the state of mind. The ancients adhered to their own ways. Namely, they dipped the brush into the ink, drew lines, and then applied colors on paper or silk. Such a tradition lasted till the end of Qing Dynasty or even till today. However mentality should not be subject to the traditional confinement, so many Chinese went to study in Europe in the early 1900s. Oil painting in the 1920s and 1930s was still far from maturity and soon the learning and training was interrupted by wars. After the wars, the functionalist phase arrived and most oil painters were excessively tied to a specific purpose in mind and Maksimov’s norms. Then it came to the modernist phase when artists alternated between concrete image and abstract form on one hand and between presentation and representation on the other. When the reality made a helpless sigh, functionalism returned. In the opinion of artists like Zhou Chunya, all effort is not aimed at the dazzling human world with its myriad temptations, but at a unique liberty and mentality. The ancients are right except for their rigidness. People today may understand it, unless opinions are imposed on them. Having seen through all the rules and regulation, what shall we do now?
Zhou Chunya temporarily gives up the western civilization he used to be familiar with, but he employs the western ways to present Chinese mentality today, which is neither occidental nor oriental but simply belongs to his own life. In this case, the peach blossoms and branches painted with free brushstrokes are no longer oil painting or Chinese oil painting with clear-cut profiles. Instead, it is kind of contemporary brushwork.
In the new millennium, dichotomy is completely out of date. Chinese painters have been engaged in a century’s discussion over the relationship between western oil painting and Chinese painting. Such discussion ceased to be valid at the end of last century.
Peach blossoms reveal Zhou Chunya’s state of mind, which keeps developing with the continuously blooming flowers and growing branches. Through the images the ancients created, Zhou has learned about the macro world, and what’s more, the free mentality and taste for painting. The life today makes him realize the significance of revealing mentality as it is. Where did the tradition start? Where does the ethnic influence end? Current artists should be no longer obsessed with such questions.
The flowers have just appeared. In the process for a mass of bloom on peach trees, we may discern the extension of the painter’s unrestrained mentality.
In the new century, people continue to seek the historical rationale for arts. With new means and devices emerging all along, what shall we concentrate on?
As the ancient saying goes, “see a world in a grain of sand”. We cannot see it as truth, but it is a mental reality revealed by means of in-depth realization. Before technology could turn the human world into a physical world in an absolute sense, the subtlety of the mental world is still the most valuable.
Zhou’s peach blossoms do not belong to the material world, which is doomed to be uncertain. Zhou Chunya starts his painting on quite several pieces of canvas, either simultaneously or in sequence. Without agenda or impulsion, there comes the only result—all the expressions come from nowhere but the artist’s free mentality. Ni Yunlin’s landscape painting may not be labeled as freehand brushwork in traditional Chinese painting. And Zhou Chunya’s paintings may also object to such labels. Mentality is not interpreted by conception, but by instinct, with which the artist has brushed out the peach blossoms. As a spectator, one should eliminate stereotypes when appreciating his works. Only in this way could we encounter the artist in his paradise of peach blossoms and have a dialogue with the narrator.
时间在一点点地流逝。如果不经意，我们会觉得生活随着时间的流逝在不断地重復。中国古人教导我们对微观世界不必过分关注，因为，无论我们在物质世界里有怎样的折腾，生命终究会回到起点。于是，对于部分人来说，原地打坐成为一种面对世界的方法，成为实现生命周期的途径。
周春芽虽然在艺术训练上的知识背景与木刻刀、铅笔素描、油画颜色有关，但是他也断断续续地翻阅古人的画册：两宋山水、八大、黄宾虹。所以他也完全懂得前述的道理。问题也刚好在这里出现了，我们究竟是无为而治的修炼，抑或是在物理世界中继续耕耘？这样的二元抉择对于周春芽来说似乎都不合适。
艺术反映生活。曾经的那隻“黑根”在艺术家内心唤起了自由与活力，这导致了无数隻“黑根”和“绿狗”的诞生，她们成为周春芽摆脱複杂的肌理和结构的契机。可是，如果仅仅把题材的变化看成是唯一的，就是一种缺乏敏感性的表现。事实上，周春芽放肆和借用了“黑根”的灵魂，他希望像它那样充满有力量的敏感与活力。所以，当画面上的褐色调子渐渐隐退之后，绿色就成为活力的更为自由的象徵。周春芽知道什麽叫“活力”，所以他在需要的时候使用了红色，同时，活力的内在性引导他放松了笔触和色彩的厚重的使用。重要的不是说“厚涂”、“笔触”还是使用薄薄的颜料，不是画中的那只或者那几只“狗”需要如何给予生动的表现，周春芽已经度过思考画中是否具有表现力这样的时期。并且，所谓的风格问题也成为没有趣味的问题。在越来越放肆的“绿狗”表现中，周春芽退出了符号问题、结构问题、风格问题，甚至退出了表现问题，从那些深思熟虑但不经意就形成的笔触痕迹上看，画家进入了无目的的笔墨时期。
我们开车去城外吃饭，谈论艺术和艺术界的新闻；我们翻阅画册，但眼睛望着窗外，望着墙上新完成和未完成的作品；我们坐在小酒馆，讨论着未来的可能性和近期的安排。总之，生活没有什麽现代主义的系统性，也没有理论上的焦虑，甚至如果欲望一旦产生，第二天就飞往上海，或飞往温馨的丽江，无论是谁。就是在这样的状态中，画布上草草的花瓣和绿叶时隐时现。直至有一天，树枝和桃花出现在我们的面前。
西方人不太习惯无目的的游戏，尽管康德有一个“无目的性”的概念。桃花是什麽时候出现在他的画中？是一九九七年？那时，桃花是“绿狗”的一个陪衬，一个点缀，一个艺术家另外的念头的流露？总之，桃花在二○○四年出现在周春芽的画面中。这是桃花的世界，狗不是跑开了，就是在远处回望作为主体的桃花树。现在，这是一个桃花的世界。
用任何现代主义的术语或者后现代的概念来叙述周春芽的桃花都是吃力的。语词本来就很笨拙，在描述形象的时候总是词不达意。批评的作用在于唤起，所以，如果我们要说出桃花的历史，就不必用熟悉的术语。
我们知道范宽在深山危谷中的状况—“居山水间，常危坐终日，纵目四顾，以求其趣，虽雪月之际，必徘徊凝览，以发思虑”，他希望在面对自然的时候冥想出或者体验到一种境界。太多的人认为范宽不过是宋代的写实主义的隐士，可是，面对丘壑，他所希望得到的东西不完全是石头，或者哗哗的流水声，而是自然的“趣”味。显然，我们不能滑落到苏东坡的意思上去，因为苏东坡的概念本身有矛盾，他不能解释“形”与“意”之间的可以证实的界限。可是，对中国文化传统有知识的人能够理解苏轼的部分意思，放笔而去的过程就是自由的心境本身，扩大开去，我们不一定对材料有什麽限制，哪怕是用树枝在地上划出一条线来，我们也许可以对心境进行判断。古人有古人的固执，那就是限于用尖尖的有水分的毛笔在砚台上蘸上墨，于纸和绢上勾勒与渲染，这样的习惯居然延续到了晚清，甚至持续到今天。心境不应该受这样的限制，这就是上个世纪初的中国人到欧洲去留学的原因。二三十年代的油画其实是幼稚的；战争中断了学习和训练；以后是功能主义的时期，大多数使用油画颜料的画家囿于具体的目的性，满足于马克西莫夫给出的规范；再以后，是接续三十年代的现代主义，艺术家在具像与抽象、或者描绘与表现之间困惑；当现实表现出无可奈何的空气时，功能主义的形象再次出现。其实，在像周春芽这样的艺术家的心里，所有的努力不是为了一个花花世界，而是一种特殊的自由心境。古人没有什麽不对的地方，除非你不喜欢他的固执；今天的人也可以理解，除非你坚决要他同意你的观点。所有的清规戒律已经被看清楚了，我们究竟应该做什麽？
所以，周春芽暂时放弃了他过去熟悉的西方文明，但是他用西方文明的工具在表现今天的中国人的心境，这个心境既不属于西方，也不属于东方，而仅仅属于艺术家自己的生活。这样，随意而自由的笔触产生的桃花或者树枝不再是界限清晰的油画或者中国油画，而是绘画，是当代的一种绘画。
在新的世纪里，两分法完全成为古董，中国画家在传统与西方，或者油画与中国画的关 上讨论了一百年，直至上个世纪末，这样的讨论变得无聊起来。
桃花是周春芽的心境，在不断展开的桃花和树枝的世界里，心境也在不断地展开。古人通过他们的图像教会了周关于宏观世界的认识，教会了关于笔墨中的自由的心境与趣味，而今天的生活让艺术家了解到了真实心境的重要性。什麽是传统的开始？什麽又是异域文化影响的结尾？对于今天的艺术家，不应该有这样的问题。
桃花才刚刚盛开，在一个不断绽开的过程中，我们目睹了一个自由的心境的开放与延展。
翻越世纪之后，艺术的历史依据究竟是什麽继续成为问题；人类的手段与工具是如此地丰富与层出不穷，什麽是我们应该关注的焦点？
事实上，古人已经告诉了我们：“一花一世界”，这不是真理，这是通过领悟而知的精神事实。在人的世界没有被科技改造为纯粹的物理理性的世界之前，精神世界的微妙性仍然是最为宝贵的。
周的桃花不属于物质世界，这注定了这个世界的不确定性；周春芽在好几张画布上同时或者先后展开他的涂抹。没有时间表，但有冲动；没有计划，但有结果—所有的表现来自艺术家的自由的心境。将周春芽的绘画作任何归类的努力都缺乏艺术上的正确性，就像我们不必将倪云林的山水归纳为“写意”一样。认识和理解心境需要的是直观而不是概念，艺术家是在没有任何概念的情况下涂抹出桃花的，我们也应该在观看的过程中消除已有的陈见。这样的结果是，作为观众的我们与作为叙述者的艺术家在桃花的世界里相遇和对话。
桃花即将盛开，让我们在桃花的世界里相遇……（文章来源：《周春芽》）
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