王中的雕塑创作有一段不平常的历程，他从学院主义走到现实主义，再从现实主义走到今天的阶段，对于他当前的创作我们很难用一种定义性的风格来概括，因为他不仅走出了学院主义，同时也走出了现代主义。王中的艺术是在实践中发展起来的，他既不是主动地追求某种既定的风格和样式，也不是为了顺应某种思潮和流派，而是在作为社会实践的艺术活动中随着生活观念的变化而导致自身艺术的发展。因此，他的作品虽然具有强烈的形式感，但渗透在其中的人文精神与社会意识却是对形式的超越。
如果我们单纯分析王中近期作品的形式，可以归纳到立体主义或超现实主义，或两者的结合，但我们注意到，现代主义艺术是工业化时代的视觉经验与精神危机的反应，尤其在雕塑方面，从机器到建筑，从交通到电气，现代工业为雕塑观念提供了极为丰富的空间与材料意识，现代雕塑可以说是工业资本主义的浪漫颂歌。西方现代雕塑对中国现代艺术的影响主要体现在价值观念方面，也就是说，中国艺术家在追随西方现代艺术语言的时候，并不是像西方早期前卫艺术家那样从具体的经验中感受工业化时代的影响，而是将西方现代艺术作为一种精神象征，以追求艺术自由和自我价值的实现。这种现象在80年代的中国前卫艺术运动中十分普遍。进入90年代以后，中国社会快速向现代社会迈进，对于现代艺术不只是价值的追随，而逐渐有了理性的认识和现实的经验。王中的艺术应该是在这样一个背景中发展起来的。也正是基于这样的背景，才可能认为不可能把王中的艺术归纳到任何现成的流派，因为他是从自身的经验及对现代艺术的认识和理解中形成自己的风格和语言，分析王中的艺术也就必须追溯他的艺术历程。
王中有着坚实的现实主义造型功力，凭借这个基础，他在城雕创作中取得了突出的成就。虽然我们很难把他的城雕作品与目前的风格联系起来，但至少有两点使我们看到他的早期创作活动对他后来的影响。首先是城市的概念，城雕创作使他与城市密切相联，城市的空间，建筑的结构，旧城的拆毁，新城的扩建……，这一切不仅直接影响他的视觉经验，而且也影响他对于工业文明的观念。其次，在城雕创作中，他在一直坚持探索个人风格的同时，也将建筑的观念吸收到他的创作中，这就是说，从他开始探索形式的时候，对他影响最大的可能是建筑的语言。不论他自己是否意识到了，正是这种实践才直接导致了他后来在形式与主题上的突破。王中的主题性创作首先就与建筑和环境有关，但他不是从形式的角度搬用建筑的观念，而是从城市的变迁与文明的冲撞中探讨人与历史、文化和环境的关系。他的这组作品名为《老北京系列》，从标题上可以看出，现实主义仍然是他的出发点，他是在对现实的关注与切身的体验中来组织题材和开掘主题。作品又没有采取的一般的现实主义样式，他吸收了装置（环境）艺术的一些成分，将具像的雕塑（老北京人的形象）与拆迁后的废墟组合在一起，明确而深刻地揭示了主题。“老北京”在这儿以双重的形象显示出来，即老北京的房子和老北京人，两者在材料上有一种互换的关系，作为“现成品”的自然材料的废墟将被消除和消失，而用金属材料制作的人物却会永久存在。利用公共空间（即使不是长久存在）作为作品的展示方式，显然与王中长期从事城雕创作有关，但更重要的是，他有效地利用这种环境表达了当代社会的重大课题，即人与文明的冲突。城市的兴起总是以破坏旧有的生存方式为代价，人们在失去传统的生存家园的同时，也失却了精神生存的家园。因此，在他的作品中，在拆毁的老北京的胡同废墟前面，是一个忧伤的老人。个人的历史是由生活的记忆构成的。记忆又物化在具体的符号之中。老人失去的不只是栖身的居所，实际上是失去了他曾拥有的生命。《老北京系列》在材料的选择上似乎还有更深的含义，环境是自然形态，是泥土构成的断壁残垣；人物则是金属材料，这种逆向的对比关系正是象征着失去的自然环境，而人则被工业文明所物化。这种象征的含义在该系列中的《拆迁计划－97》中体现得更为明显，人物正在失去其自然形态（自然本质），逐渐异化为一堆金属。
应该说，《老北京系列》在形式上体现了新的构想，但对于主题还是描述性的成分居多，尽管这组作品标志着王中在雕塑创作上的一个飞跃。不过这批作品对他还有着更重要的意义，这可能使他意识到现代雕塑语言不是单纯的形式创造，现实的意义与命题才是形式创造的原动力和催化剂，并且使形式获得真正的生命。王中说：“我相信有一种精神性的东西存在着，我希望我的作品能暗示或引伸到作品以外的某些内在性内涵，所以我做作品总有一种无法摆脱的沉重感。”现实的命题经过形式的转化使形式承载超越视觉的精神意义，这就是王中从《老北京系列》到近期作品的又一次飞跃。在近期作品中，王中实现了两种抽象，一是主题的抽象，一是形式的抽象，而两种抽象都同时指示着现实关怀与终极关怀的统一。相对而言，《老北京系列》更接近对个人经验的直接描述，而在《生命？》（1998）中，现实的描述被隐藏起来，但那种“内在性内涵”则来自对现实的反思，并通过形式的转换获得强烈的效果。这件以锻铜和铁板焊接构成的作品有一种视觉上的张力，两块铁板把一个人的剪影分为两半，中间的铁板上则托着一个锻铜的婴儿。这种严格对称的结构有一种沉重的压力感，这种压力既来自形式的张力，也来自形象的联想。两块沉重的铁板似乎对弱小的婴儿形成不可抗拒的挤压的力量。形式的张力与主题的联想正是作品的意义设定：物化的人与自然的人之间的冲突，而且前者是后者的注定归宿。形式不是孤立地存在，隐喻的象征与现代雕塑语言，结构、空间、材料等融为一体，使形式同时成为文化与精神的载体。
王中的近期作品熟悉的运用现代雕塑的语言表达了后工业化时代的主题，这不仅在他的艺术发展中是一个重要的突破，同时也是中国当代雕塑的一个范例。当代艺术的精神性是从以当代为背景，以当代经验和实践为基础对当代问题的思考和表现，形式的表现力必须凝聚在这些因素之中。《大十字1999》和《遗物1900－1999》表现的都是共同的主题，即一种世纪末的忧思，一种对文明的焦虑。在这两组作品中，十字架和墓地与高度物化的人形成尘锐的对比，是对现实的反思还是对未来的悲剧性预言？与就像他的作品《躯壳》（1998）一样，用螺栓把不锈钢与锻铜栓接起来的人形犹如古埃及的雕塑，有一种正面律的庄严感，而支撑着这种庄严的则是一根链条。人类的伟大正是在于无限的创造力，而无限制的发展也可能使人类变得前所未有的脆弱，这种悖论就像人类的伟大与束缚它的链条一样。充满想象力的构思与深刻的现实思考结合在一起，使形式具有了生命，也实现了精神对形式的超越。
INSPIRATION OF SPIRIT AND FORM
--COMMENTS AND ANALYSIS ON WANG ZHONG’S RECENT SCULPTURE CREATION
By Yi Ying
Wang Zhong has taken an unusual journey in his sculpture creation, in which he set off from scholasticism and went to realism, and then came to current stage. However, it is not so easy to summarize his current creation by a conceptional “style”, because his creation has gone beyond not only scholasticism, but also realism. Wang Zhong’s art has been developed in practice. He neither pursues some set style or pattern actively, nor complies to some ideological trend or school, but develops his own art with the change of his life conception in his art activities, which has been taken as some kind of social practice. For this reason, although Wang Zhong’s masterpieces have a strong sense of formality, spirit of humanities and social consciousness permeated among his masterpiece have beyond the form.
If we just analyze the form of Wang Zhong’s recent masterpieces, it can be summed up to Cubism or surrealism, or the combination of both the two. However, we have also noticed that modernism art, especially sculpture, is the reflection of the visual experiences and spiritual crisis in the time of industrialization. In the aspect of sculpture, developed from machine to architecture, from transportation and communication to electricity, modern industry has provided extremely rich consciousness of space and material to the conception of sculpture creation. It is not exaggerate to say that modern sculpture is a romantic praise for industrial capitalism. The effect that western modern sculpture has brought to Chinese modern art is mainly reflected in the aspect of value conception. That is to say, when Chinese artists began to follow on the way of expression of western modern arts, they could not have a real feeling of the effect of industrial time from a detailed experience like their image, the western artists in early phase. What the Chinese artists can do is taking the western modern art as a kind of spiritual symbolization to pursue their freedom of arts and realization of their self-value. This kind of phenomenon was quite a common one during China’s avant-garde art movement in the 1980’s. China’s society has been marching to modern society quite rapidly since the 1990’s. To modern arts, Chinese artists have got much more rational knowledge and practical experiences gradually, but not only pursuing to the value. Wang Zhong’s art should also have been developed under such a background. Moreover, it is also because of such a background, we could have the conclusion that Wang Zhong’s art could not be summed up to any set school. Wang Zhong has formed his own style and way of expression from his own experiences and his knowledge and understanding to modern arts. Therefore, we must first trace back to Wang Zhong’s art process before we set off to analyze his art.
Wang Zhong has solid efficiency and merits in realism profiling, depending on which he could have chance to obtain outstanding achievements in his urban sculpture creation. We can hardly integrate Wang Zhong’s urban sculpture masterpieces with current style of his art, however, we can make out that his early creative activities has brought great effect to his latter work from at least two points. First comes out the concept of urban. The creation of urban sculpture link Wang Zhong closely to urban, including urban space, structure of urban architecture, demolishing of the old city and extension of the new city, etc, all of which have not only affected his visual experiences directly, but also affected his individual opinion on industrial civilization. Secondly, in his creation of urban sculpture, Wang Zhong has always sucked up the conception of architecture into his creation while he insists exploring his individual style. That is to say, when he began exploring his sculpture form, what affected him most might be architectural expression. No matter whether he himself has realized that point, it is this kind of practice that has directly led to the breakout on form and theme in his later creation. Wang Zhong’s thematic creation has close relationship with architecture and environment firstly. However, he has not just used the architecture opinion from only the aspect of form, but inquired into the relationship between human being and history, culture and environment from the great conflicts brought by urban vicissitudes and civilization. This series of masterpieces created by Wang Zhong were named Old Beijing. We can draw from the title that his starting point is still realism, and he is organizing the subject matter and digging the theme by his own experiences and his focus on the actuality. Wang Zhong did not carry out common realism style in this series of masterpiece, but absorbed some elementary compositions in unit art, or environmental art. He revealed the theme clearly and profoundly in the masterpiece by combining the concrete sculpture of an old Pekingese’ profile, with the ruins of ancient urban houses after being pulled down. Thus, “Old Beijing” has been outlined with double image of both ancient urban houses in Beijing and old Pekingese in the sculpture. The materials of the two images have a relation of mutual exchange: the ruins, which are taken as ready-made by natural materials, will be demolished and disappeared; while the human profile made by metal materials will be existing permanently. It is obviously that Wang Zhong’s expression technique of utilizing public space as a measure of showing the masterpiece, even though the public space might not exist permanently, is related to his longstanding experience in urban sculpture creation. What is more important is that he has taken full advantages of the environment effectively to express a major issue in modern society, namely, the conflict between human being and civilization. The growing up of cities always pays a high price of destroying the old living style, which means what human being has lost at the same time is not only the traditional living homestead, but also their homestead for spirit longstanding. For this reason, Wang Zhong profiled a distressed old Pekingese in front of the ruins of the demolished old Beijing Hutong (alleyway) in his masterpiece. History of each individual is always composed by memory of personal life. Memory is always being materialized into concrete symbols. The old Pekingese lost his roof to live under, however, actually he even lost the life he once owned. The choice of materials used in the series of Old Beijing seems to have much profound meaning: environment is of natural pattern, which is mud-composed crumbing walls and ruined curbs; while character is of metal material. This kind of reversal contrast relation just symbolizes that human being is being materialized by industrial civilization while natural environment is being missed. The meaning of such kind of symbolization was embodied much obvious in the sculpture Removal Plan-1997, a piece of the whole series: natural pattern or natural intrinsic quality of the character is being lost and being alienated in to a pile of metal gradually.
We should admit that the series of Wang Zhong’s Old Beijing have embodied a new sort of proposition in form. However, there are still much more description to the show off theme than expected, although this series of masterpiece has been taken as a milestone in Wang Zhong’s sculpture creation. Moreover, these masterpieces have another much important meaning to Wang Zhong that they might make him realized that modern sculpture expression is not only pure creation in form, that the meaning and proposition of reality are prime power and catalytic agent to the creation in form and style, which could make form and style obtain its real life and vitality. Wang Zhong once said: “I always believe that there exists some kind of spiritual things. I always hope that my work could suggest or expound some internal meaning out of the work itself. Therefore, I always could not rid myself of a sort of heavy mind during my process of creation.” Once the proposition of reality has been transformed by form, the latter will carry some spiritual meaning beyond visual, and this is the other leap that Wang Zhong has made from his Old Beijing series to his recent masterpieces. In his recent masterpiece, Wang Zhong has realized two kind of abstract: one is abstract of the theme; the other is abstract of form. But both these two kind of abstract show off the integrity of both concern to reality and concern to ultimate at the mean time. Comparatively speaking, the series work of Old Beijing approach much closer to a direct description of individual experiences, but in the masterpiece of Life? (Finished in 1998), description of reality has been concealed, while Wang Zhong drew upon the “internal meaning” from his profound consideration to the reality, and obtained strong effects through the transformation of the form. The masterpiece of Life made from weld forged copper and iron plates has extremely strong visual stimulus, in which two iron plates split the outline of a person into two halves, and another iron plate in the middle supports a profile of an infant made from forged copper. Such strict symmetrical structure brings the audience great pressure, which comes from both the stimulus of form, and association of the image. The two quite heavy iron plates seem to form up an irresistible pressing power to the small and weak infant. Stimulus of the form and association of the image are just the set meaning of this masterpiece: the conflict between materialized human being and natural human being, and the former is the doomed destination of the latter. Form could not and does not exist isolated, metaphor symbolization has been made into integrity with modern sculpture expression, structure, space and materials, thus makes form become carrier of both culture and spirit at the same time.
Wang Zhong’s recent masterpieces show that he is a frequent user to express the themes in post-industrial time by modern sculpture expression. This is not only a significant jump in the development of his art, but also an outstanding example in the field of China’s contemporary sculpture. The essence of contemporary art is taking the contemporary time as background, considering and expressing contemporary issue on the basis of contemporary experiences and practice, thus the expressing power of form should be concentrated into the elements above. Both Wang Zhong’s Great Cross 1999 and Remains 1990-1999 express the same theme, which is a kind of worry and concern at the end of a century, a kind of worry about civilization. In the two series of works, the artist makes a sharp contrast between cross and graveyard and human being that have been highly materialized. What can we take it as? Is that a profound reconsideration to the reality or a tragic prediction to the future? Just like Wang Zhong’s Outer Form (finished in 1998), in which work he made human being by connected stainless steel and forged copper with screws like a sculpture in ancient Egypt. The work has a strong sense of positive dignity, and what supports the dignity is a length of chain. The greatest significance of human being lies in their unlimited power of creation. However, the unlimited development might make human being become much more fragile than ever, and this kind of paradox is just like the relationship between the significance of human being and the chains that limit human being’s development. Wang Zhong’s masterpieces make out integrity of composition full of imagination and profound consideration to the reality, at this extent, he entrusts life into the form, and realizes spirit jump beyond form and style.
First published at World Arts, Jan, 1999
发表评论
请登录