凝视和表达：胡小军的艺术立场

胡小军 袁艺珂 

   “凝视”是一种观看方法，表达看待世界的方式和态度。有别于浏览和一瞥等漫不经心的快速观看，凝视是一种长久的观看。我是一个凝视者。在我的经历与创作中，一种包含着极复杂情绪与思考的凝视无处不在。一些古老的权威的企图压制我的力量，在我心中激起对凝视的强烈渴望。

    很多时候，作为受制于观者的身份、欲望、乃至权力关系的社会化行为，凝视不是置身事外、保持距离地拿眼瞧；它夹带着权力运作、欲望纠结以及身份意识的私货，是一种进入社会关系的方式，一种将凝视者嵌入社会秩序的手段。

    但我更倾向于一种“始于视觉指向精神；始于现实指向本质”的凝视。凝视者艰难地穿越幻象与虚空编织的视觉通道，试图去往一个流转变动的知觉世界，一个无限接近本真的境界。于是，古老的僵化开始流动，隐匿的事物变得清明。

    我的陶艺工作室曾在杭州的烟雨云山中。凝视着自儿时就熟悉亲切的中国14世纪元代文人倪瓒、黄公望凝视过的日月、山河、草木，我捕捉着古老隽永的笔墨意境；思想着如何在满构图中表达“空”。凝视着中国12世纪宋代的青瓷与散落在中国历史边缘的民窑瓷生动活泼的色釉和装饰，我追求着陶瓷与绘画的真正融合；不是在陶瓷上仿绘中国文人画，而是把泥、釉、成型、烧成等陶瓷独有的特质与色彩和线条结合进行创作。缩釉，本是陶瓷的瑕疵、缺陷；凝视着陶瓷表面的这些增生和缺失，思及中国宋代文人品味青瓷釉面开片的巧思，我开始了缩釉的试验和创作。

    我想缔造一种历史的纵向连接：我与这方水土、这方景致是亲密交融的，我的内在生命不受干扰地沉浸在顺延的审美观照中，以最举重若轻的釉彩变化勾勒出客观物象生机勃勃的灵性空间，延续着中国山水画传统的隐逸美感，再经火焰淬成和谐完满的诗意。

    而生活是流动的。2007年，我从山林回归城市，开始凝视人群。身处人群聚集、商品丰富、资本集中的炫目城市景观中；我凝视着痴迷热闹的熙攘众生。

    德波把借用毒品般意识形态复制的景观对我们世界的入侵称为“一场永久性的鸦片战争”。 在生产大发展的年代已经不需要通过饥饿和匮乏进行剥削，于是便构筑景观，激发人无穷无尽的欲望。观众们看似是自由选择，但选择常常只是在你消费这个或消费那个，沉迷这个景观或是那个景观间做出，心知肚明地沉迷其中无法自拔。

    我并非要对此种景观进行社会批判和文化证伪，在喧嚣的奇观中我有自己的眼睛。扇子、贝雷帽、高脚酒杯与自行车（如图1）、手机，……现代工业文明的产物，我观察着代表现代都市发展进程中的每个时间节点的符号；舞会的某个场景，散步骑行的惬意姿态，空洞的眼神与暴露的肢体，……我瞥见当代都市人普遍的生活状态。凝视着这些热情拥抱景观，积极分享和复制景观，在景观世界中狂欢的孤独个体；我捕捉到观众因为与景观单向联系而使他们彼此之间相互隔离的状态。于是我试图向他们注入旧时的亲密和能量，以缠绵的线条充满画面，让画中人紧相依偎（如图2）。表现对象的性别或者什么，都不重要，我想表达的只是一种爱与被爱，呵护与被呵护的感觉，一种基于肢体语言的表达（如图3）。

    游学西方是我凝视的另一种日常。一种文化如何看待另一种文化？一个民族如何在其他民族的注视下认识自身？民族与民族之间如何在互相的目光中确立自己的身份？遭遇此种困境的大多数后现代艺术创作者拥有了“文化流浪者”的身份。但行走在欧洲与美洲，我并未沦为建立在西方中心主义之上的东方主义所凝视的对象；广泛地凝视世界各地的艺术传统和文化遗产，也未曾使我的文化身份变得摇摆不定。“悉心体会传统的审美价值观，是我创作的最基本取向。”这大概是源于我的教育经历。

    我凝视有千年烧窑历史的景德镇多年。这始于大学本科时期在景德镇陶瓷大学四年陶瓷艺术设计的学习；毕业后的创作生涯，我也数次选择在这里安置我的窑炉，但我不想只作景德镇陶瓷辉煌的历史成就的一个被动崇拜者。 

    我早已学会了景德镇传统制瓷和陶瓷绘画工艺，但我认为陶瓷绘画不只是点缀于瓷器局部的装饰，我想呈现的瓷绘作品要打破瓷器造型对绘画中自在主题构成的约束，肢体缠绕的人体构图要与器物造型相吻合。作品中浓淡深浅不一的色料填充出的有肉质感的人物形象（如图4），来自我创造性地使用了15世纪晚期明代成化年间发展成熟的传统青花瓷填色使用的“分水技法”。用金属氧化物直接在吸水性很强的泥坯上创作，作画时是看不到最终效果的；要在上面实现对釉料与线条、过渡与变化的微妙把控，我经历了多年的实验与反思，最终实现在高温烧成后的满意效果。

    我曾考察和调研甘肃敦煌莫高窟和新疆吐鲁番柏孜克里克千佛洞的唐代佛教石窟壁画。凝视 这些让人惊叹的宗教石窟壁画，我思考着当时的工匠是使用何种工具绘制出画中长达三米至五米的墨线的？我想在瓷坯上也画出这样的线条，于是试着设计自己的毛笔工具。在拥有悠久制笔历史的湖州，我找到了制笔的师傅，用羊的胡须制作出了适合的长杆毛笔，这是20世纪60年代在新疆维吾尔自治区吐鲁番县阿斯塔纳古墓群出土的唐代毛笔带给我的灵感。为了画出如石窟壁画上“气韵生动”的线条，我练习毛笔书法多年，尤以公元2世纪的东汉隶书《石门颂》为摹本。由此我获得了中国传统线条的表现能力，这使我可以用古典写意的笔法在陶瓷表面塑造出鲜活灵动的现代人物形象（如图5）。

    行走在巴黎和纽约的街头，我以苦行僧般严肃的态度凝视着路人，凝视着博物馆和美术馆里古典、现代以及后现代的绘画美学和语言。重新审视那些从熟悉变为陌生、由陌生复归熟悉的作品，终使我在其中再次看清自己的文化传统。回到中国，我就忘了外国。走在人声喧哗的人群中，感觉是根本没有离开过。

 “因为那么想复活古代精神，才会意识到毫无保留的、不假思考地为崇拜过去而崇拜过去所具有的危险，才会如此直言不讳地反对那些鄙视一切现代事物的人——反对那些总是蔑视现代的古人崇拜者。”于是我坦诚地让人们看到我凝视着的各种世界、各种时刻的人们；锋利地攫取瞬时，抽象放大其中的灵性，将“同时是能看的和可见的身体” 绘制在平面的瓷板上，将人们当下破碎的时空以古老温柔的线编织在隽永的泥土上。他们头戴神性光环，携古时神气穿越时空，看起来永不过时。

1.朱晓兰. “凝视”理论研究[D].南京大学,2011.

2.[法] 居伊 德波, 张新木译.景观社会[M].南京:南京大学出版社,2006:15.

3.胡小军.尊重古代的学者.陶瓷: 艺术与视知觉[J].2002(50):87

4.分水是一种陶瓷绘画技法，将氧化钴色料加水调制成五种不同浓度的水料绘制在瓷坯上，呈现浓淡、明暗不同的效果。

5.[美] 马泰 卡林内斯库, 顾爱彬，李瑞华译. 现代性的五幅面孔[M].北京:译林出版社,2015:21

6.[法] 梅洛-庞蒂, 杨大春译. 眼与心[M].北京:商务印书馆,2007: 36

Gaze and expression: Hu Xiaojun's standpoint of art

Written by Hu Xiaojun and Yuan Yike

"Gaze" is a method of viewing that expresses a way of seeing and an attitude towards the world. Instead of quick, careless glances such as skimming and glancing, gazing is a consistent way of seeing. I am a gazer. In my experiences and creations, a gaze that contains extremely complex emotions and reflections is all-pervasive. The attempts of some ancient authorities to suppress my energy provoke in me a strong desire for gazing.

More often, as an act of socialization subject to the viewer's identity, desires, and even power, the gaze is not a detached, distanced gaze; it is a way of entering into social relations, a means of embedding the gazer into the social order, with the private goods of power operations, entangled desires and a sense of identity.

However, I prefer a kind of gaze that " begins with vision and reality and points to the spiritual and the essential. "The gazer struggles through the visual channels woven by illusions and emptiness, trying to reach a world of shifting perceptions, a spiritual realm that is infinitely closer to the real. Thus, the ancient rigidity began to flow and the hidden things became clear.

My pottery studio was once located in the poetic landscape of Hangzhou. Gazing at the sun, moon, mountains, rivers, and forests that the Chinese landscape painters of the Yuan Dynasty (14th century), Ni Zan and Huang Gongwang, with whom I have been familiar since childhood, have gazed upon, I have captured the mood of ancient and timeless Chinese calligraphy; wondering how to express 'emptiness' in full composition. Gazing at the elegant glaze of Chinese celadon from the Song Dynasty (12th century) and the vivid decoration of folk kiln porcelain scattered around the edges of Chinese history, I sought a true integration of ceramics and painting; not by imitating Chinese landscape painting on ceramics, but by combining the unique qualities of ceramics such as clay, glaze, moulding and firing with colors and lines. Reduction glaze, originally a flaw, a defect in the glaze of a ceramic; gazing at these additions and deficiencies on the surface of the ceramic, and associating them with the ingenuity of the people of the Song dynasty who savored the crackled glaze of celadon, I began to experiment and create works with the theme of ‘Reduction glaze’.

I intended to create a historical vertical connection: I am intimately intertwined with this landscape, and my inner life is immersed in a smooth aesthetic illumination without disturbance. This enables me to create a vibrant, spiritual space for my subjects with the lightest but powerful variations of glaze and colors, continuing the traditional seclusion of Chinese landscape painting, which is then quenched by flame into harmonious and complete poetry.

And life is fluid. In 2007, I returned from the mountains to the city and began to gaze at the crowds. Being in the dazzling cityscape where crowds gather, commodities abound and capitals are concentrated; I gazed at the crowds of people obsessed with the hustle and bustle.

Guy Debord refers to the invasion of our world by a landscape reproduced through a drug-like ideology as "a permanent opium war".  In an age of productivity, when exploitation through hunger and deprivation is no longer necessary, landscapes are constructed to stimulate endless desire.  The viewer appears to be free to choose, but the choice is often made between consuming this or that, indulging in this or that landscape, knowingly being addicted to it.

I do not mean to make a social critique or cultural falsification of this landscape; I have my own eyes amid a noisy spectacle. Fans, berets, goblets, and bicycles (e.g. fig. 1), cellphones, ...are products of modern industrial civilization, and I observe these symbols at a certain point in the development process of the modern city; a scene from a ball, the cozy gestures of walking and riding, the vacant eyes and exposed limbs, ...I catch a glimpse of the general state of life of contemporary urbanites. Gazing at these individuals who enthusiastically embrace the landscape, actively share and replicate it, and revel in its solitude; I capture the audience's isolation from each other due to their one-way connection to the landscape. So I tried to infuse them with intimacy and energy from the past, filling the picture with tangled lines and keeping the people in the painting close to each other (e.g. figs. 2). It doesn't matter what gender or anything else the subjects are shown, what I want to convey is a feeling of loving and being loved, of caring and being cared for, an expression based on body language(e.g. fig. 3).

Visiting the West is another context in which I gaze. How does one culture perceive another culture? How can a nation recognize itself under the gaze of other nations? How do nations establish their identities in the gaze of each other? Most of the postmodern artists who encountered this dilemma had the status of 'cultural vagabonds'. But the experiences in Europe and the Americas did not reduce me to be a subject of the Orientalist gaze based on a Western-centric perspective; Gazing at artistic traditions and cultural heritage from the world over has not shaken my cultural identity either. "Being attentive to traditional aesthetic values is the most fundamental orientation of my artistic creation."  This could be traced to my educational experience. 

I have been gazing at Jingdezhen, with its thousand-year history of kiln firing, for many years. This began with four years of ceramic art and design studies at Jingdezhen Ceramic University as an undergraduate; I have chosen to set up my kiln here several times in my creative career since graduating, but I do not want to be a passive admirer of the glorious historical achievements of Jingdezhen ceramics.

Despite having learned the traditional Jingdezhen porcelain making and porcelain painting techniques at a very young age, I believe that porcelain painting is more than just the partial decoration of porcelain; I have attempted to break the constraints of porcelain form on the composition of self-contained subjects in painting, presenting porcelain paintings in which the intertwined limbs of the human body matches the form of the object. The fleshy figures filled with varying shades of color in the work (e.g. figs. 4) come from my creative use of the "Fenshui" technics applied to traditional blue and white porcelain filling developed and matured in the late 15th century during the Chenghua period of the Ming dynasty. Using metal oxides to create directly on the highly absorbent clay blank, the final effect cannot be seen when painting; to achieve the subtle control of glaze, line, and transition on it, I have experienced years of tests and reflections to finally achieve a satisfactory effect after firing at high temperature.

The Field trips to Grotto Murals in Tang Dynasty in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, and The Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves in Turpan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, had a profound impact on me. Gazing at these stunning religious grotto paintings, I wondered what tools were used by the craftsmen of that time to draw the three-to-five-meter-long ink lines on the wall? I had a wish to draw such lines on porcelain blanks, so I tried to design my own brush tool. In Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, which has a long history of Chinese writing brush making, I found a master brush-maker and made a suitable long-stemmed brush from the whiskers of goat, inspired by a brush from the Tang Dynasty unearthed in the 1960s at the Astana ancient tombs in Turpan. I have practiced Chinese calligraphy for many years in order to draw “rhythmic vitality” lines as those in the grotto paintings, in particular imitating “Ode to Shimen”, an official script from the Eastern Han Dynasty, 2nd century AD. Thus, I have acquired the unique expressiveness of traditional Chinese calligraphy, which allows me to create vibrant and dynamic modern figures on the surface of ceramics in a classical atmosphere (e.g. figs.5).

Strolling through the streets of Paris and New York, I gazed with seriousness at passers-by, at the aesthetics and languages of classical, modern and post-modern paintings in museums and galleries. Reconsidering masterpieces that have changed from the intimate to the unfamiliar and then back to the familiar has finally encouraged me to see my cultural heritage again.  After I returned to China, I detached all the foreign arts from my mind. Walking through the crowds of my people, it felt like I had never left at all.

  “It was because he wanted so much to revive the spirit of antiquity that he was conscious of the dangers of an exclusive and single-minded cult of the past for its own sake, and so outspoken in his opposition to those who despised anything modern, contra laudatores veterum semper presentia contemnentes. ” So I frankly let people see the various worlds and moments I was gazing at; I sharply captured the instantaneous, abstracted and magnified the spirituality of it, drawing "bodies that are simultaneously able to see and to be seen" on porcelain plates, weaving the broken time and space of people in the present with ancient gentle threads on the timeless clay. They look like wearing a halo of divinity on their heads, traveling through time with their ancient divinity, as if eternal.

Notes

. Zhu Xiaolan, ‘An Analysis on Gaze Theory’, Diss, Nanjing University, 2011.

. Guy Debord, La société du spectacle, Zhang Xinmu (trans.), Nanjing University Press, Nanjing, 2006, p. 15.

. Hu Xiaojun, ‘Respecting Ancient Scholars’, Ceramics-Art and Perception, no. 50, 2002, pp. 87.

.“Fenshui” is a porcelain painting technique in which the cobalt oxide color is mixed with water to make five different concentrations of liquid and painted on the porcelain blank, presenting different shades of color effects.

. Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, Duke University Press, Durham, 1987, p. 22.

. Merleau-Ponty, L'Œil et l'Esprit, Yang Dachun (trans.), The Commercial Press, Beijing, 2007, p. 36.