岛 子
画家是神圣启示的领悟者，但他更重要的是一个形式的探索者、创造者。领悟神圣的启示，并运用自然所供给的任何材料来构筑一个精神与美的世界。唯其如此，他才能对艺术拥有深刻的良知。进而，他才有可能从与自然的从属关系中超越出来，获得精神的自由。
安昌奎近年的绘画表达的主题，是其心灵对于自然创化。他是一个勤奋的形式探索者，经过多年的实践，其绘画艺术逐步形成了以下几种基本要素：其一是从东北自然地理衍化而来的原始而非智力化的基本意象符号；其二是纯粹形式（色彩、结构）的音乐性构成；在此基础上进而营造超意象的质感效果等。画家把这些基本要素结合在风景的绘画语境之中，并由想象力来统摄这一切。在这种对想象力的膜拜中，画面的每一部分都处在一个被发现的位置里，它们连接了梦想与现实。这种探索最终要求一件作品既能领自身的意味达致完全的清晰，又能提供给感官以高尚的愉悦。或者说，这二者必须完全结合为一体以致作品达到完美与和谐。
在作品的创作过程中，画家倚重表现性的画面视觉品味，但又能够不失自然天成的旨趣。为此他在过去十几年形成的十分精到抽象性语言基础上，朝向意向性转化，显示了一种优美、流动、透明的气韵，极大地丰富了个性化的绘画语汇。此外，他的风景作品整体气氛具有多重层次的神秘特性，以及由此而在空间中产生的绵延感，这些正是他全力追求的，也就是极力切近心灵对于自然创化的一种形而上了悟。
安昌奎风景油画作品在风格上是意象化的抒情，一种介于抽象与具象之间的风格。这种意象化绘画风格是建立在意境美学精神上的，其特征是以写意的手法、运用意象语言的隐喻性，营造艺术意境。其旨趣为“隐秀”。隐，以复义为工；秀，以卓绝为巧。“隐”，意味着含而不露，意味着超乎象外的多重意义，这正是写意性、抒情性绘画艺术的价值和画家的追求。虚实关系的美妙体现是其原则，虚，指繁复、博大的内心世界，或人对现实世界、想象世界的内在感知与体验；实，是客观存在的与人相对峙的物象世界。但虚实相生、婉转含蓄、情景交融仅仅是意象绘画的原则，而原则又如何体现主体的精神？何以才能以实为虚，化虚为实？何以才能化景物为情思、化情思为景物？何以才能将某种特定的心境、体验、感受进行物化处理并把它们呈现在人的眼前？风景油画的当代性将如何构建？这一切都成了意象化绘画要面对的基本问题。
风景绘画史对自然世界的心灵表征积累了丰富的图像资源，为意象化绘画带来许多可能性，安昌奎采取了以隐喻营造意象，以意象化抒发本我之情，从而实现其风景绘画的审美境界。因此其作品中既有水墨艺术和书法艺术的线型法度，又有梵高表现主义色彩技巧的巧妙化用，其画面很少强烈冲突与对比，在看似无意识的率意用笔与丰富的色彩上营造自然和谐。意象绘画的优越性就在于回味不尽的言外之意，以简写繁，以气韵代结构，以少总多，情貌无遗。意象化的自然审美表现，最终使画家排除了一种与现代科学霸权相联系的对于精确性的诉求，这种精确性的诉求即所谓的现实主义风格，在绘画史上曾经长期支配了风景的表征方式。而在安昌奎的油画风景中，几乎没有对于人或者自然物的细致呈现，其色彩和线条都是率意而激扬的，但有趣的的是，其意境却如童心般纯净而明澈。他排除了许多现代、后现代艺术家在传统惯例的压力下所产生的创新焦虑。
安昌奎的油画艺术大致可分为两种不同的探索意向，前一种趋向于事物的“基本符号”的对应性，由于它植根于精神世界的本质纯洁性，因而也必然以最少的形象来表达，这就是他在1990年代抽象绘画的一种趋向，包括后来参加韩国光州双年展览的系列油画作品。其理想视觉中师人类情感的泛文化的符号形式，抽象化的实现即艺术符号(Art Symbol)——人类普通情感的载体，亦是艺术家思想状况的症候。循此推衍而来，艺术的基本符号从人性论观点引伸出入“符号的动物”取代于“理性的动物”，由“社会动物”祈向于“审美动物”，这同样适合其意向化艺术的本体论。由此可以看出，画家热衷于将艺术本质的探询直接同人的本质所思结合起来，从而在对于人的自然、文化处境之解释中寻找未被定义的原始意象，这种探索表明了画家的超然悟性。
“基本符号”的抽象油画作品之后，则发展出意象化的风景油画，其画面中的元素由意象化的东北山水景象生成，诸如长白山、兴凯湖、扎龙湿地，松嫩平原、三江流域、大小兴安岭山区等，在那里还保留着未被旅游文化和文化工业侵染的自然景象，保留着“此中有真意。欲辨已忘言”的神思境界。安昌奎的意象化绘画建立在“基本符号”之上，又远远超出一般的东北自然地理特征，换言之，东北山水的客观景象为画家的想象奠定了自然与精神的意识中之象，这种意象在其风景的表征中蕴含着灵性的呼唤，含有超验的抒情性向往。这种探索不止在安昌奎的风景油画中得以自觉演绎，同时还有原来北方艺术群体中的画家刘彦，近年的油画风景带有明显的形上沉思意味，以及“后89”时期的北京艺术家孔永谦，他从澳洲游学回国后定居沈阳，以东北山水景象为“基本符号”，潜心创作了一系列大尺幅的带有基督教神学观念的油画风景。这几位中年画家都经历过1980年代的先锋艺术运动的洗礼，而今他们衍化于新世纪风景绘画的支流中各有所成，是一种十分值得关注的现象。
黑格尔曾用一个忧郁的句子写道：“当哲学以灰色描绘其灰时，生命的形式接着就变老了。”当代艺术的观念化倾向，其实是受到了分析哲学的侵蚀，其负面逻辑使艺术与哲学自身同时陷于自身的目的性策略。然而，艺术对哲学的“报复”或者激励就在于它的混沌无序、天真烂漫、非确定性而且非理性。哲学家以整体性的名义构筑的迷宫并不是艺术的避难所，相反可能成为灵性的牢狱。在对反的意义上，可以理解安昌奎意向化绘画的另一个趋向，即进一步疏离理性逻辑，转向非确定性、甚至非形式的相对观念。但他并不放弃风景的文化质地表现，在新近的风景作品中，画家力求在自然宇宙的洋洋运动中感悟并体现上帝创造世界的神圣力量与魅力，使人产生一种宁静、阔大的境界。
不少中国先锋艺术家在新世纪转向纯粹的自然抒情和神圣的赞美，并非是对艺术意义深刻性的逃离，而是由于当代社会资讯的过度膨胀、具像传媒迷离交错而激发的一种泛宗教化的灵性追求，一种在世俗烟尘中对无限星空的仰望姿态。比较而言，西方诸历史先锋派抽象艺术在二度空间求取精神性的场域，例如硬边、色域绘画、极简主义等；东方的当代意象画家则在完整的西方抽象艺术史之外，重新寻求到东方智慧中某种阐释自然宇宙的视觉语言，从符号的象限走向忘象的艺术追求，诚所谓：“本乎形者融，灵而动者变，心止灵所见，故所托不动，目有所极，故所见不同。于是乎以一管之笔，拟太虚之体••••••”。（王微《叙画》）。
形式探索或形式主义艺术在当今面临的是一个后现代语境的文化历史条件，这一条件的设限在于：在语言论美学转向之后，形式美学包括抽象形式的自律性——无论侧重感情和感觉表现的“热抽象”，抑或侧重组织结构、传到宇宙意识的” 冷抽象“，都面临失去文化变革的社会功能，因而它所允诺的神性领悟、自由涵义的艺术价值，必然要在新的“炼金”意志或“内在需要”中去重新塑造精神内涵，以各种差异见证“不可见证之物”。因此可以说多元主义为形式主义的终结带来了精神纯粹性的缓刑，同时为秉持内心严肃与艺术真诚的艺术家带来了凌越进化论艺术史的极大可能。在此顺便指出，台湾“五月画会”、“东方画会”以及高行健等海外意象化的绘画形式试验，为我们提供了意象艺术发展历史思考的新视角和路向。
当代意象化风景绘画的意义在于，它不仅仅从深度生态主义的维度回应全球生态环境危机；更重要的是，艺术家要倾心领悟神性启示，适切地给出一种启示性的艺术范式。惟愿如此，人类失衡费感性世界方可回到永恒神恩的阳光谷地，重获植根于大地和整个自然宇宙的精神基础。
2007年11月， 清华园
Representation of Nature`s Spirituality:
The Lmagery and Landscape Paintings of An Chang-Kui`s
Dao Zi
The painter understands holy revelations, and moreover, he is an explorer and creator of forms. He comprehends holy revelations, and uses any material provided by nature to construct a world filled with beauty and spirit. Only in this way will can he achieve a profound intuitive knowledge of art. Then he will be able to surpass his subordinate affiliation with nature and gain spiritual freedom.
The dominant theme in An Chang-kui`s paintings this past year is a spiritual recreation of nature. He is a diligent explorer of forms. Within years of practice, his painting gradually adopted some basic elements. One is the basic image of symbols derived from natural environments df northeast China. They are primitive symbols, not intellectualized. Others include the melodic construction of pure forms (colors, structures)and the texture of supra-images based on them. The painter combined all these basic elements into the context of landscape painting and commanded them all imaginatively. ln this king of worship of imagination, every part in the painting is in the position to be discovered. They connect dreams and reality. The final object ofthe exploring is to bring every painting to the height of expression while pleasing the sensual organs with a graceful happiness. Ln other words, the two points must be combined completely to achieve perfect and harmonious works.
During the creation of the works, the painter focused on visual expression, and maintained essential points of nature. lt took him more than 10 years to create this outstanding abstract language. Building on the foundation, he converted to images and revealed a graceful, flowing and transparent spirit,which greatly enriched his personalized painting language. Ln addition, the overall atmosphere in his landscape works possess many layers of mystery, and his spaces creat a sense of continuity, this is the metaphysical understanding of natural creation he has been pursuing all along.
An Chang-kui`s landscape paintings are image-filled sentiments, a style lying somewhere between abstract and realist paintings. The imagist painting style is built upon the spirit of sthetics; its characteristics are the use of freehand techniques and image-based metaphors to form his artistic conception. The aim is” hiding elegance.” Hiding creates multiple meanings beyond the shapes; this is the value of freehand lyric paintings as well as the aim of many artists. lts rule is the representation of e relationship between emptiness and entity. Emptiness refers to the vital inner world, or the inner perception and experience of e real world and imagined world. Entity is the objectively existing physical world that is opposite to human beings. But how can we express the spirit of the subject through rules fo harmonious development of emptiness and entity? How can emptiness become entity? How can landscapes become emotional thoughts? How can we represent moods, experiences or feelings? How can we construct the contemporaneity of landscape oil painting? These are the basic questions such imagist painting has to face.
Throughout history landscape painting has accumulated rich image resources for representations of nature, and has provided many possibilities to imagery painting. An Chang-kui uses metaphor to create images and images to express the emotions of the id, finally realizing his aesthetic conceptions in landscape paintings . That`s why his works are combined with linear freehand rules of water and ink art and calligraphy, as well as Van Gogh`s expressionism color techniques. Rarely there are strong conflicts and contrasts in his paintings. The natural harmony is represented by a seemingly unconscious freehand brushwork and rich colors. The advantage of imagist painting is its unforgettable implications expressed by simple forms. Lmagery in natural aesthetics finally helps the painter to eliminate appeals to the kind of accuracy associated with the hegemony of modern science. The appeal to this accuracy is what we call realism; it has ruled the representation of landscape for a long time There is nearly no detailed representation of human or natural things in An Chang-kui`s landscape oil paintings; the colors and lines are straightforward and passionate. Lt is interesting that his artistic caused by the pressure of a tradition that causes anxiety in many modern and post-modern artists.
An Chang-kui`s oil painting art can be divided into two different ways of exploring. The first is inclined towards the correspondence of “basic symbols” which are rooted in the purity of a spiritual world and can only be represented with the minimalist forms. This was his trend towards abstract painting in the 1990s, including paintings exhibited in the gwangju biennale. Lts ideal angle is the pan-cultural symbolic forms of human emotions. The realization of abstract as art symbol-being the carrier of common human emotions is the symptom of abstract as an art symbol-being the carrier of common human emotions is the symptom of artists` thoughts. judged in the manner above, the basic symbols of art, human are” symbolic animals” replaced” animal of rationality” through humanistic opinions, and” social animal” changed to” aesthetic animal,” which is suitable for the ontology of imagery art. We can see that painters like to combine the exploration of the nature of art with human nature. And find the undefined original images in the explanations for human`s natural and cultural situations. This kind of exploration indicates the superior comprehension of painters.
Lmagist landscape using oils developed after the “basic symbols” in abstract oil paintings. The elements in his paintings are images of landscape sceneries of northeast china including changbai mountain, xingkai lake, zhalong wetland, songnen plain, the three-river valley, d axing`an mountain where the natural sceneries unpolluted by tourism, culture and industry. An chang-kui`s imagist paintings are based on “basic symbols” and go far beyond natural geographical characteristics. Ln other words, the objective northeast landscapes provide the image of nature in painter`s spirit and imagination. These images contain the calling of spirituality in the landscape representation and transeendental lyrics. This kind of exploration exists not only in an chang-kui`s paintings, but also in liu yan and kong yong-qian`s paintngs. Liu yan is a painter from the northern art group and his recent oil paintings have an abvious sense of deep thoughts. Beijing artist kong yong-qian “post 1989`s” has relocated Shenyang after study abroad in Australia. He used northeastern landscape as”basic symbols” and created a series of large-scale landscape oil paintings using concepts from Christianity theology. All these middle-aged painters have experienced the avant-garde art movement of the 1980`s. lt deserves our attention that they all have achievements in branches of new century landscape paintings.
Hegel once wrote a sentence in blue, “when philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old.” Actually the conceptualization trend of contemporary art is corroded by analytical philosophy whose negative logic sinks art and philosophy into its objective strategies. But, the “revenge” or inspiration from art to philosophy is its chaos, innocence, non-determinism and irrationality. The maze set up in the name of integrity by philosophers is not art`s sanctuary; on the contrary, it may be a jail for spirituality. From this point of view, we can understand another trend in an chang-kui`s imagist painting: that is staying away logic and turning to relative concepts df uncertainty of even anti-form. But he has not abandoned the representation of cultural texture in landscapes. Ln his recent landscape works, the painter is trying to apprehend and reveal the holy power and charm of recreating the world by god through the movements of nature and university, to create a peaceful and broad spirit.
Many Chinese avant-garde artists turned to pure natural lyrics and worship of the holy in the new century. Lt`s not an escape from the deep significance of art, but the pan-religious spiritual quest instigated by the over-expanding of modern social information and massive concrete media. Lt is also an upward-looking gesture from the mortal world to the starry sky. Comparing the west and the east, the historical avant- garde abstract arts of the west incluing hard-edge abstract, color-field painting as well as minimalism are looking for a spiritual area in two-dimensional space;while in the east, contemporary imagist painters have rediscovered some visual language that explains nature and universe in eastern wisdoms outside of the complete west abstract art history, and get to natural imagist space from a symbolic quadrant. They use the experience of “cleaning the heart and finding the tao” to pursue the art of “ getting the spirit and forgetting the forms”. This is just like what wang wei said in his book on paintings,” to use one brush to imitate the body of the universe…..”.
The exploration of forms or formalism art is facing cultural and historical conditions in a post-modern context. The limit of this condition is that: after the turning of language aesthetics, the autonomy of form aesthetics, including abstract forms-whether it`s the “hot abstract” focusing on the representation of emotions and feelings, or the” cold abstract” focusing on structural organization and a universal sensibility, all are facing the loss of cultural revolution and social function, therefore, the art value of holy understanding and freedom it has promised will have to be refined in the new” gold smelting” will or “inner needs” to form new spiritual contents, and witness the “ the things that can not be witnessed” with all kinds of differences. Therefore, we can say that pluralism has brought a trial for spiritual purity for the end of formalism as well as the possibility of surpassing evolutionism art history for the serious and honest artists. By the way, the overseas imagery painting form experiments by “ may association of the art “, “east association of the art” in Taiwan and artists like gao Xingjian have provided us with more viewpoints in understanding development of imagist arts.
The significance of modern imagery landscape painting is that it responds to the global ecological crisis on the basis of ecological ideology and, more importantly, artists should comprehend a holy enlightenment and offer a suitable art model with revelatory ideas. Only in this way will the unbalanced perceptual world of human beings return to the sunny valley of eternal grace and regain the spiritual base that roots people to the land and the entire universe.
November2007,tsinghua campus
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