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【评论】我们何以能够诗意地栖居How Do We Dwell Poetically

2011-09-22 19:14:24 来源:艺术家提供作者:王 林 Wang Lin
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  纵观李强的油画创作,其实我们可以发现,他一直在艺术中寻找诗意化的表达方式。一开始画花卉,他就有强烈的形式追求,从颜料的质感、笔触的肌理、色彩的丰富和构成的讲究,都可以看出他有很好的功底。但这种强调形式美感的唯美倾向,后来为李强日渐偏离,原因在于作为一个真诚的艺术家,他不能不听从内心对生活现实的反应。在今天这个充满问题的世界上,美的形式和形式的美,很难成为艺术家逃避不幸的理由。

  于是,李强一度转向现实题材,开始画空难、火灾、旧工厂和城市风景。这种转变之于李强的意义,不是社会批判在画面上变得多么重要,而是让他充分体会到了艺术家审美把握世界的复杂性和矛盾性。“审美”之谓,是与科学理性、哲学思维和宗教信仰等等不同,人以自己独特、具体的感性来把握世界的一种方式。翻译为“审——美”二字,最大的问题是把感性活动变成了仅仅是审视美的活动。而关于美的社会规范,则把个别的鲜活的感性集体化和权利化,这是在个性化时代艺术家拒绝古典美的根本原因。所以,当代艺术不是要舍弃美,而是要求艺术家作为个体如何去重新审视美和把握美,如何在把握对象世界的复杂性和矛盾性之中去重新发现美和创造美。事实上李强那些美丽而壮观的灾难图景,乃是在正视悲剧之后力图重返审美理想的努力。画家以其积极的人生态度,不希望人们永远生活在无望和无奈之中,意愿以个人创造给苦难人生带来些安慰、同情和对于幸福的体会。但李强不想假以唯美自我麻醉,画面中残忍与柔美、惨淡与温馨相互纠缠的情感性,对李强来说才是真实而具体的。一个艺术家的审美理想其实既非道德说教也非思想认识,而是建立在他用什么方式去把握对象的基础上——对于一个画家,这种方式也就是他观察事物和取舍对象的不同角度、支配其感觉感受的文化背景和心理类型,以及他长期习得而独自擅长的绘画技法等等。

  因此,李强要“在人间、在日常生活中发现天堂”也好,要“在悲剧性的人生建立一种审美理想”也好,其实都从未离开过他自己的艺术方法。他始终难舍对于美的留恋,这种情怀是他最为稳固的心理支撑。从某种意义上讲,他之所以对中国古代宋元绘画特别感兴趣,是因为天性所致、爱好所致,甚至是技法所致。那种宁静的悠远、那种淡泊的雅致,的确让人不得不产生源自生命内心的感动。但这种优越而精深的人生体验在今天已经难以寻觅,李强说:“我在画面中所想传达的是一种牵扯着我们内心情感和文化血统的传统在逐渐消失的现实。”他在《返境》系列中重返花卉题材是自然而然的,其实在《荷花》、《玉兰花》等作品中已经可以看到不同于过去画花的端倪。

  《返境》作品以灰蓝色为主调,即使有冷暖色彩的精心置配,也因为笼罩在朦胧氛围之中的缘故,无论是一枝独秀,还是花团锦簇,其描绘都显得高雅、纯净和悠远。背景是含混的,因为不具体和非场景性,给画家提供了充分发挥晕染技法的余地,我想这大概是画起来最愉快的地方,看《现场》作品的同类技法,画家早已经得心应手。李强在渲染的空间中特别注意光的表现,不仅造成了进退有致的层次感,而是创造了神秘迷离的感受性。这种雾里看花的景象设置,一方面把传统工笔花鸟的装饰性融解,化作色彩隐约变化的太虚幻境,另一方面又把传统写意花鸟的象征性泛化,变成离距传统道德的生命体验。最重要的是,这种体验是在场发生的,又是具体真实的。

  李强让笔下的花卉从烟云雾气中浮现而出,其间光的隐现、形的虚实、色的朦胧与清晰,都表达出一种时间体验。在消失与捕捉的视觉感受之中,画家把失落与追寻的文化象征悄然传达给每一位观画者。他想做的是“将遗失的文化感官和体验重新设置在当下,用我的方式指示出一种生命的感悟”。这种感悟是中国人与生俱来的、对自然事物有着悠久历史传统的内心倾慕与精神亲和。眼前的花卉是如此优美,又如此虚幻;如此让人心醉,又如此让人心碎。李强在画面上引动心理摩擦的方式,不再像以前那样采用题材对象和绘画方法的对立,而是更内在、更含蓄、更隐性地处理形式意蕴中的某种矛盾。舒缓、平和的抒情性描绘与凸现于枝叶花蕊上的深色点线,构成突兀而谐调,统一而尖利的视觉对比。李强不是大起大落的人,他喜欢在有限的心理尺度中去呈现精神世界中隐隐作痛的矛盾。

  李强近作展命名为“返境”,是想在返观传统的途中去寻找自己的精神寄托,他说:“我特别关注个体生命的价值和存在的意义,因为我们生存的当下是一个物质主义盛行的现实,物质之重,生命之轻,让我们忽略了生命存在的价值本身。”在历史与现实、理想与生活、美丽与伤痛的矛盾之中,李强有自己作为当代画家的位置,他为“诗意地栖居”而“终日劳作”,艺术给他的报偿,是观者在作品前缓缓升起并充溢于心的悲戚与欢欣。

  我想起小时侯去重庆南温泉仙女洞,曾见过一龛观音,两旁刻着一幅对联:“天堂地狱皆心造;烦恼清凉各自修。”当时就十分惊讶信仰者的超脱,并不在乎信教与否本身。后来多次重返,不见佛龛踪影,只有对联牢记在心。人在烦恼的世界里生存,并非每个人都能像教徒那样全身心进入清凉净地,但直面烦恼而不失清凉的精神追求,不正是今日艺术的价值吗?

  借此与李强共勉。

  2010年8月14日

  重庆黄桷坪桃花山侧

  Taking an overall view of Li Qiang’s oil paintings, we will find that he’s always been looking for a poetic way to deliver. Even when he just started painting flowers, he already got strong consciousness for format. From texture of paint and brushwork as well as the rich colors and refined constitution, you can easily tell that he is quite skilled. However, this aesthetical tendency to pursuit the beauty of format had been gradually cast away by Li Qiang himself, because as a sincere artist, he can’t betray his inner reflection on real life. In this troublesome world, format of beauty and beauty of format can hardly be the reason for artists to escape from the wretched world.

  Thereupon, for a time Li Qiang turned to realism theme, such as air crash, fire, old factory and city landscape. This conversion made him realize the complexity and inconsistency of the world for artists to grasp. Aesthetics, different from scientific rationalism, philosophical thoughts and religion, is a way of people understanding the world through their own special sensibility. Chinese words for aesthetics is “shen mei”, which merely suggests an activity of surveying and judging. The element of sensibility has been lost in translation. On the other hand, social criterions about beauty also have made personal feeling and lively geist into a collectivized and authorized thing, which is fundamentally why artists in a time of individuation reject classic beauties. Therefore, modern art doesn’t mean to abandon beauty; it means that artists should review and grasp beauty as an independent entity,and moreover, rediscover and recreate beauty in handling the complexity and inconsistency of subject world. As a matter of fact, those beautiful, magnificent disaster prospects in Li Qiang’s paintings are exactly an effort to return to aesthetical ideality after confronting tragedies. The painter, out of the nature of optimism, doesn’t want to see people indulge in helplessness and desperation, wishing to bring people certain comfort, compassion and experience for happiness through personal creation. Yet Li Qiang doesn’t want to lull himself with beauty. For him, brutality and misery entangled with tenderness and coziness are the real and material things. In fact, the aesthetic ideality of an artist is neither morality sermon, nor ideology cognition. It is about how the artist understands and handles his subjects. For a painter, this is about how he observes his subjects, making choices between different angles; it is the cultural background and psychological type that drives his feelings and emotions; it is the long practiced painting skill which he is the only one good at.

  Therefore,either “ to find heaven in earth and daily life”, or “ to establish an aesthetical ideality in tragic life”, Li Qiang has never been away from his own method of art. He has never been able to give away his affection for beauty, which actually is the most solid mental support for him. To a certain extent, he is so interested to Chinese painting of Song and Yuan dynasty because of his nature, his taste and even his skills and methods. Indeed, the faraway tranquility and poised elegance can easily generate inner movement from deep heart. However, we can hardly get this superior and intensive life experience nowadays, just as Li Qiang said, “what I have been tring to express in my painting, is the fact that the tradition involving our spirit and cultural blood is disappearing.” It is a natural result that he returns to flower subject in his latest works. As a matter of fact, in many of his works, such as “Water Lily” and “Yulan”, we can already see some characteristics that distinguish them from the traditional ones.

  The series of Return to the Place is basically bice in color. Even if there are some intentional arrangements of warm and cool colors mixed up, they will also be vestured with a dreamy air. The flowers, no matter outshining others lonely or enhancing each other’s glamour together, without exception look elegant, pure and faraway in a background of obscurity. The abstract background leaves sufficient room for the painter to exert the skill of shadowing. I think this might be the most pleasant part of painting for the painter. Li Qiang also pays a lot of attention to the expression of lights which not only makes the picture look rich in layers, but also generates an air of misty mystery. Setting the subjects in abstract scenery, on the one hand, removes the decorative quality of traditional Chinese meticulous flowers-and-birds painting; on the other hand, it generalizes the symbolization of traditional freehand flower-and-birds painting and changes it into a life experience that has nothing to do with traditional morality. Most importantly, the experience is on the scene. It is real and substantive.

  Flowers in Li Qiang’s painting emerge from cloud and mist. He uses lights and colors alternating from nihility and reality to convey the conception of hour, during which, the painter has quietly delivered the lost cultural symbol to each of the audience. What he wants is to “put the lost cultural experience in present time, which hopefully will lead to an insight for life”. This insight is a nature of Chinese people who has always been longing for nature and spiritually connected to it for a long time of history. The flowers we see are so graceful and yet transient, so enchanting and yet so heartbreaking. The way Li Qiang creates psychological friction in the picture is no longer by the opposition of subjects and methods, but through some deeper contradiction between format and connotation. Gentle and lyrical brush touch and dark dots and lines on branches and pistils together constitute a visual contrast which is abrupt yet harmonious, concerted yet edgy. Li Qiang is not a high-sounding person, that’s why he rather to unfold the painful antinomy of spiritual world in a limited psychological scale.

  Li Qiang’s latest works are named with “Return to the Place” which suggests his wish to find a spirit bailment in the way back to tradition. “I consider the meaning of personal life and individual existence very important, because the world we live in is prevailed with materialism. Materials outweigh lives, which makes us neglect the value of life itself.” said Li Qiang. In the confliction of history and reality, ideality and daily life, beauty and pain, Li Qiang has found his own place as a contemporary artist. He works restless just to “dwell poetically” and the sorrow and exultation overflowing from the audience’ hearts when watching his paintings are the recompense art returns to him.

  I can’t help remembering my trip to the Fairy Cave in South Hot spring Chongqing when I was little. There was a Kwan-yin niche with a couplet chiseled on the wall. The couplet read that “Both heaven and hell are built by heart; all troubles and happiness are aftermath of our own demeanor.” I was deeply impressed by how other-worldly people could be, and it doesn’t matter what they believe in is religion or not. I returned to the place for several times, but I never saw the Kwan-yin niche again. It doesn’t matter because I have had the couplet carved in my mind. We live in world of troubles and worries,and not everyone of us can get to the Pure Land with body and mind like religious people. However, confronting the worries yet not giving up the spiritual pursuit for peace and leisure, isn’t this exactly the value of today’s art?

  This could be an encouragement for both Li Qiang and me.

  2010-8-14

  On the Hillside of Peach blossom Mountain,

  Huangjiaoping, Chongqing

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