Appearance and Essence: the Development of Liu Yonggang’s Artistic Outlook

Guo Xiaochuan, PhD, fellow of China Arts Academy, famous critic of fine arts　　It is apparent from China Radio International’s interview with Liu Yonggang that he started to be interested in German expressionism in the early 1990s. At an exhibition of German expressionist works, he found that they were very similar to his idea of the best way of expression. Therefore he decided to pursue his studies and career in Germany. 　　There is a consistent style and pattern to everyone’s thinking, and that is all the more true of artists. The selection of the way of thinking is not sudden innovation, but the intensification of some unique feature in a continuous process. In every seemingly new ‘turn’ is hidden a clue of long standing. Liu’s understanding and acceptance of German expressionism are exactly the continuation of his way of thinking. In one of his earlier works that aroused interest in his peers, Shepherdess of Northern Sala, one could see many factors that coincide with the spirit of German expressionism. 　　At its beginning, German expressionism carried on the expressionist tendency in the traditional arts of Northern European countries. That tendency could be strongly felt in the ‘barbaric’ arts of early Germanic people, the medieval Gothic art, and works by such Renaissance artists as Bosch and Bruegel. What was it about expressionism that fascinated Liu? Or, what was it about expressionism that inspired him to go to Germany? Though I haven’t discussed that with Liu, I can tell from his artistic career that it is an important key to understanding his artistic outlook and works. 　　As advocated by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), who founded Drucke Die in 1905, in a manifesto, ‘Everyone, every one of us, will express what drives them to create directly and without any insincerity.’ Praising Van Gogh, Gauguin and Manch, they held primitive arts in pious esteem. Melancholy, emptiness and puppet-like expressions were almost characteristic of such expressionist works. Gauguin went so far as to believe that ‘modern human intelligence has lost its function in elaborate analyses; it fails to feel the simplest and the most obvious.’ (Edward Lucie-Smith, Contemporary Western Fine Arts, 1986) Under such a principle, their strategic focus was the understanding and use of primitivism. In terms of the theory of contemporary western theatre, primitivism has three orientations: performance, ritual and carnival (Wu Fei, The Avant-garde and the Primitive: Three Characteristics of the Avant-garde Theatre). Expressionist artists incorporate the visual intuition of primitivism into their means of creation, which went a long way to expressing irrationality, passion, mysteriousness and subjectivity. The mysterious passion and suggestive expressionism inspired contemporary Chinese arts to create important works. One of the masterpieces is the world-acclaimed oil painting Shepherdess of Northern Sala painted by Liu in 1987. The rendering of the human figure and colors reflect his interest in latent passion and subjective meanings. The posture of the human figure, almost clumsy and stiff, indicates his sensitivity to ritualistic primitivism art. 　　Instead of confining his art to German expressionism, the ten-odd years of study and creation will take his creative practice beyond the expressionist spirit. As he said, ‘After I saw a lot of exhibitions and works abroad, I found that for all that I learned in college and saw abroad, I had lost myself. I was still learning and imitating. But I finally came upon the point where I found it necessary to be myself. How do I find myself? I got to find my root. Where is the root? It’s the traditional Chinese culture. I’ve been fond of Chinese characters since I was young. So I started to return. That is, I began to study and compare characters of different periods of the tradition. And finally, I turned their shapes and compositions into visual images.’ (quoted from CRI’s interview with Liu). That indicates that his artistic outlook experienced some new development, that is, the incorporation of traditional Chinese culture and art into the formal expression of contemporary art. 　　It was during that period that Liu created a large number of works of abstract expressionism. As we know, abstract expressionism is in line with expressionism in terms of the anti-figurative aesthetic view, self-indication and the forceful expression of the artist’s own feelings. Liu’s works convey a dignified power with powerful, uninhibited strokes and rich, bold colors. Some compositions that feature the cross convey religious sacredness. That may be the result of the interweaving of the ritual-orientation and carnival-orientation in primitivism. Interestingly enough, Liu deliberately accentuated the importance of ‘writing’ in traditional Chinese calligraphy. The stress on the spirit or impression in the Chinese cultural tradition is similar to the importance attached to abstractness in modern western culture. In the eye of westerners, who are used to perceive the world in terms of the binary opposition between the subject and the object, the abstraction of the object is also fascinating. The Chinese belief in tianrenheyi, or man being an integral part of nature, suggests unity of the subject and the object. As Wilhelm Worringer (1875-1965) observed, ‘Easterners known that they cannot see god in his limitedness.’ (Form in Gothic, tr. Zhang Jian et al) That epistemological characteristic determines that the Chinese care more about forms that suggest abstractness, as embodied in their perception and study of calligraphy, and their aesthetic appreciation of the interest of ‘brush and ink’. Liu was keen enough to grasp the spirits and changes of Chinese and western arts and cultures, and was ingenious enough to incorporate the form and spirit of modern western art into his thinking about the spirit of the traditional Chinese art. The result was contemporary works rich in the oriental spirit. 　　As he paid attention to the oriental, especially the Chinese tradition, he made an original examination of a more primitive type of human feeling and power that interested him. The outcome was the series of sculptures entitled Embrace of Love. Talking about the theme, Liu said, ‘Let’s embrace the world, mankind, society and every day with love! Love is the only way to mutual possession. Let love reign!’ He got his inspiration from oracle bone inscriptions, the Mongolian script, and even the Basiba script. 　　Liu’s Embrace of Love is reminiscent of Brancusi’s Kiss. With simple, impressionist techniques, Brancusi elevated the love of a couple embracing and kissing each other to a pregnant idea of love, the tenderness of which induces great warmth in the heart of the viewer. The moving effect could not been achieved by any realistic work. Valuing pure and complete intuition, Brancusi expressed his perception of the essence of things with extremely simple shapes. Apparently, Liu also tried to use a simple way of expression to abstract and personify the theme of love and to make his own interpretation of the essence of love. However, the love he tries to expound transcends all human limitations; it was the love as in ‘the Good love people’ (Confucius). When Fan Chi asked Confucius what was Goodness, the latter answered, ‘It means loving people’ (Analects: Yan Yuan). We may say that the love of the individual and the Goodness of society are the objects and essences of each other. ‘For an individual, Goodness is, in essence, the call for the essence of life. It is the ideal objective diligently pursued by the individual, and also the driving force of the individual’s perfection.’ (Zhang Han & Shi Hongwen, History of Chinese Aesthetics). What Liu tries to express is such a highly abstract and meaningful idea of ‘love’. 　　Centering round the theme of love, abstract characters are arranged in personified postures of embrace and varied structures. They produce an effect of heaviness and softness. While expressing his sensitivity to and original understanding of the material, Liu turned hard stones into warm, gentle lives. When his sculptures, both the tall, open-air ones and the small ones in the art museum, are displayed in a formation, viewers seem to see them grow with full vitality. Their grandness or sturdiness conveys a sense of expansion. Here, the expressionist spirit, which had deep influence on Liu, was converted or transformed. The mysteriousness of expressionism or abstract expressionism is replaced by positive eulogizing. Here we clearly see Liu’s efforts to blend the tradition of contemporary western art and the spirit of traditional Chinese culture. (Guo Xiaochuan, PhD in fine arts studies, art critic, editor in chief of Contemporary Chinese Arts, Chief Advisor for Investment in Works of Art at Beijing Zhongli Culture and Sports Co. Ltd.)