我为苏笑柏的展览取了个名字叫“考工记”。它原本来自春秋时代的文献《考工记》。《考工记》是中国研究手工艺的最早专著。近年来，苏笑柏创作了一大批用漆作为媒介的艺术作品。这批作品很难用纯粹的“绘画”概念去界定，相反，“漆艺”的过程成为苏笑柏创作的核心，而作品的符号和图像因素则是附属的。所以，这个展览的真正意义在于展示苏笑柏从事“工艺”的过程和这些工艺制作出来的作品本身。因此，从这个意义上讲，它是一个真正意义上的“考工记”。

　　艺术家从事工艺?这岂不是对他的艺术价值的贬低?工艺就是百工之技。正如《考工记》所说：“坐而论道，谓之王公;作而行之，谓之士大夫;审曲面执以饬五材，以辨民器，谓之百工。”所以百工就是工匠。而工匠在中国传统中一直是受歧视的，所以古代艺术史叙事始终是重文轻工。现当代艺术史亦如是。中国以文人观念为价值的艺术史可以追朔到魏晋时期，到元代而集大成。这个“文以载道”的观念在当代仍然是主流，艺术创作几乎等同于“坐而论道”。更何况，20世纪后半期以来的艺术，始终没有脱离杜尚的观念艺术的阴影。尽管今天的艺术家不乏雇用工人和关注技术者，但是，那都是被隐藏在背后的无名生产者，不可以作为创作核心来讨论。那么，苏笑柏对“漆”的工艺如此投入地探索和陈述，是否表达了他对这种观念主流的批评呢?

　　苏笑柏早年学过工艺，这可能奠定了他现在的兴趣所在。但是，在中央美术学院的进修学习和到德国杜塞尔多夫美术学院的学习经历都说明苏笑柏在努力追求现代艺术形式。当然，苏笑柏对现代艺术的理解和探索与他这一代人的背景有关。无论是在他早期革命题材的油画《大娘家》还是后来在德国创作的那些以传统家具和古代文化符号(比如文字)为题材的油画中，都显示了他的中国学院主义的背景。学院主义力求把精致的风格、优雅的趣味和贵族式的东方情调统一在画面之中。这注定学院主义在中国过去三十年的艺术史中既不能成为冲击社会的先锋，也不能竖起艺术语言革新的大旗。

　　苏笑柏在德国乡下一所小学改建的房子中宁静居住了十余年，他自己称之为“小隐”。这给了他足够的时间去思索和冥想。十余年的时间终于使他蓄势爆发，从学院主义中脱胎换骨。那么，苏笑柏是从哪里得到重生的?从一种纯粹性之中，找到了单纯和直白，丢掉了趣味、风格和文化意义这些深刻的“意”，回到绘画的表面— texture (肌理)，再简单些，就是回到漆的表皮。

　　这个“回归工艺”的念头非同小可，它给了苏笑柏一个“非表现性主义”的观念。这个观念和他的过去从此分道扬镳。十年的孤独终于带来了顿悟。这个顿悟让我们想到了极少主义对早期现代抽象主义的逆反，极少主义用“你看到的是甚么就是甚么”的命题来反对早期现代主义的乌托邦表现精神。换句话说，极少主义强调线条和色域的物质性，以抵制现代主义对绘画内容的幻想。当然，苏笑柏的“非表现主义”和极少主义可能没有关系，他和极少主义也不在同一个历史语境之中。苏笑柏的语境可能很个人化，也许很偶然。艺术家对肌理表现的冲动，使他很偶然地找到了漆这种媒材。

　　“回归工艺”是我总结的。但是，它在苏笑柏的两段话中说得很明确：

　　大漆作为颜料在我的绘画中得到使用，在材媒特性上并不具有特殊的含义，与宏扬中华民族传统瑰宝毫无关系。它只是一种绘画过程中的染色而已。使用大漆作色，也不基于任何新奇的想法，而是源于我的一次试验，即如何把绘画中的色彩布置得更好。

　　我关心最多的往往是艺术在创作过程中作为工艺阶段的技术问题，而绝不是大量可憎的艺术术语。那些发狂般臆造出来的新概念、新断代、新使命不会对我们的绘画有任何帮助，在我们的创作中也没有甚么特殊的东西需要新的词语来加以解释。①

　　苏笑柏把工艺技术的极端非表现性视为他的低调艺术的立场。如果把这种工艺性低调艺术的观点放到当下的艺术语境中，我们会发现，它既不符合先锋艺术的意义膨胀的叙事方式，也不符合时尚艺术的图像泛滥的叙事模式。所以，这种“低调”传达了一种对中国当代艺术的批评针对性。我曾经在《中国极多主义》中讨论过当代一些艺术家通过过程、重复和手工等极多形式表达这种低调的、非表现主义的、反意义泛滥的创作批评立场。所以，“回归工艺”是一种低调批评立场，不等于艺术家真正从事工艺。但是，苏笑柏的独特性在于他真正脚踏实地地试图把传统工艺转化为绘画性。换句话说，他的最终着眼点仍然是意味。只不过是一种更加极端的意在言外而已。

　　苏笑柏这个低调的、工匠式的创作着眼于一个说不出来的“意”，那个没有象的、只能在看之中，甚至在触摸中体味到的意。

　　这个意恰恰是通过多重的悖论被表现出来的。艺术家的工作就是把这些悖论作的极端和不露声色。

　　首先，用工艺程序制作绘画本身就是一个矛盾。漆的工艺技术一般是为器物服务的。然而，苏笑柏运用复杂的漆工艺所作的并非器物，相反是“画”。所以，传统漆工艺就失去了实用的功能依托。非表现的程序和技术被迫承担了“表现性的”功能。

　　当然，漆工艺也可以作漆画，它属于一种工艺装饰品。可是，苏笑柏的“漆画”不但拒绝表现任何意义，避免叙事，更不想用装饰性的形式去取悦观众的眼睛。苏笑柏的“画”不是绘的。他只是在铺漆和贴麻布之前在底板上勾出简单的圆或者条、方这样的简单图形，它们只是构图的元素，并不承担过重的宇宙或者结构主义的意义。它们只是漆—这种可以自己“说话”的物的承载。漆用它自身的光洁，它的乌涂，它的厚重，它的不可替代的质量去说话。比如，有人说，世界上最好的色彩就是宣纸的白和漆的黑。因为，这种白和黑是极为丰富的，又是含蓄保留的，它们非常有性格，是不可替代的。“漆黑”这个词就道出了漆的美学本质。黑得极致，黑得最美，黑得超现实。所以，宋徽宗用生漆点鸟的眼睛，换取栩栩如生的效果。

　　再有就是趣味上的矛盾。因为传统漆器基本是为贵族服务的。所以，大漆的光色质量和精致的漆器总给人以“殷实”的感觉。 中国最早的漆器发现于七千年前浙江河姆渡文化。那时，漆器的功能就像青铜器一样，也是为礼仪服务的。根据文献记载，战国时皇家专设漆园，庄子还曾经担任过管理漆园的官吏。

　　但是苏笑柏在他的作品中把这种贵族味改变为一种“文人”趣味。他把大漆的光洁度打磨变暗，并且通过合成的化学反应把单纯的漆色变成复杂的灰色调。把规范性的工艺程序变成个人化的体验。于是创作过程就是和漆的对话，在反复打磨、抛光、调和之中寻找一种偶然性惊喜。这个惊喜就是进入境界，类似一个文人画家最终在宣纸上得到一片萧疏荒率的山水，那打磨后的漆色就像水墨画中的积墨晕染或写意勾勒。

　　但是，所有的这些低调并不能掩盖苏笑柏的作品在视觉展示上的辉煌。他把画和上千张瓦片组合在一起，他展示了一种大气(漆)的辉煌。

　　所以，低调的生活和低调的观念不等于不可以创造出辉煌。辉煌不等于体量巨大，而是无限性。无限性是看不到的。它不完全来自作品，它和艺术家的生活和工作空间有关。正如苏笑柏所说，看一个艺术家的艺术，不应当只看他的作品，还应当看他的工作室。确实，在今天产业化的时代，艺术和人的关系，已经不是“画如其人”，而是“画室如其人”。进一步，一个艺术家的艺术质量不能仅仅由他的作品来评判，必须由他的全部艺术生活来检验。

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　2008年11月4日于北京

　　①《访谈录—艺术作品是艺术家生活的全部》百溪与苏笑柏访谈，引自文学杂志《今天》，2006年冬季号。

　　I have christened Mr. Xiaobai Su’s exhibition “Kao Gong Ji.” The title comes from a long treatise of the Spring and Autumn period,① “Kao Gong Ji,”②arguably the first monograph on craftsmanship in China. In recent years, Mr. Su has produced a good number of artworks that have lacquer as the medium. They are difficult to define by the strict concept of “painting.” Rather, the execution of “lacquerership” has become the core of his creation, with the properties of the work as an icon or an image reduced to adjuncts. So the very significance of this exhibition lies actually in its display of Mr. Su’s engagement in the “craftsmanship” and of the works produced in this process. In this sense, it is, for all intents and purposes, “an examination record” of a craftsman.

　　Why does an artist commit himself to craftsmanship? Is he not depreciating his own artistic worth? By craftsmanship is meant the skills of all stripes of artisans collectively. According to “Kao Gong Ji,”

　　Those who are seated comfortably and discuss the ways of the world are the kings and dukes. Those who run about to implement policies are the gentlemen-administrators. Those who examine in every possible detail and develop the five materials to produce various utensils are the numerous artisans.③

　　So “the numerous artisans” here obviously refers to craftsmen, who have been traditionally disdained in China. Accordingly, the art history of ancient China gives, without fail, far more space to the men of letters than those of crafts in its discourse. In modern and contemporary China, the situation proves no better. Here, the art history that takes the literati’s opinions as its own values finds its origin in the dynasties of Wei and Jin and reached its apogee in Yuan, the Mongolian regime. The tenet, “Literature for Morality's Sake,” remains dominant even today, and artistic creation is almost regarded as equal to “[be] seated comfortably and discuss the ways of the world.” Moreover, since the latter half of the twentieth century, Art has never walked out of the shadow cast by Marcel Duchamp with his conceptual art. Admittedly, some artists will employ workers or show their concern with technology nowadays. But workers and technology have always been kept obscure behind the proscenium and are not to be discussed as part of the core of art production. Then, by conscientiously exploring and recounting the craftsmanship of “lacquer,” is Mr. Su voicing his criticism against the mainstream concept?

　　Mr. Su learned to practice traditional handicraft in his novice years, and this may have pinpointed to him where his interest lies. But, his experiences in the Central Academy of Fine Arts of China and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (State Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf) of Germany, respectively as a visiting and a regular student, are proof enough that he has been seeking modern art forms. Of course, Mr. Su’s appreciation of and exploration into modern art are closely related to the cultural background of his generation. His Chinese academism is clearly reflected both in his early oil painting, “At Auntie’s,”

　　which has a theme on the communist revolution, and in the oil paintings that he painted later in Germany with themes on traditional furniture and ancient cultural icons (e.g., scripts). Academism endeavors to foster the trinity of exquisite style, noble taste, and aristocratic Oriental mood in the tableau. This, however, has predestined the fact that over the past thirty years in China’s art history, academism has been unable to be a pioneer in challenging social conventions and to raise the standard for the reform in the language of art.

　　For more than ten years, Mr. Su lived in a house, an erstwhile primary school, in the German countryside. He styled himself as a “petit hermit.” Such a life left him sufficient time to think and even meditate. The decade or so made possible his eruption after a long dormancy and his metamorphosis from academism. Then, where did Mr. Su obtain his golden opportunity of such a renaissance? All in purity, methinks. He has succeeded in uncovering simplicity and plainness and discarding such profound “significances” as taste, style, and cultural meaning. He has returned to the surface of the painting—texture, or to put it more directly, the outer layer of lacquer.

　　This idea of “return to craftsmanship” must not be undervalued, since it imparted to Mr. Su a notion of “non-Expressionism.” This notion prompted him to bid adieu to his past. More than ten years of solitude finally brought forth sudden illumination, which reminds us of the reaction of Minimalism to early modern Abstractionism. Minimalism opposes the Utopian expressionism of early Modernism with the proposition, as Frank Stella has put it, “What you see is what you see.” In other words, Minimalism places emphasis on the material aspect of the line and the gamut of color, so as to resist the fantasies of Modernism about the contents of the painting. Of course, Mr. Su’s “non-Expressionism” probably has nothing to do with Minimalism. Nor does he find himself in the same historical context as Minimalism. Mr. Su’s context may be highly individualized or accidental. It was just with this artistic impulse to represent the texture that he found, by accident, lacquer as an ideal medium.

　　“Return to craftsmanship” is my summarization. Yet it manifests itself in the following two quotes from Mr. Su:

　　The use of raw lacquer as a pigment in my paintings assumes no significance in terms of medium properties and is a far cry from the promotion of this traditional Chinese art heritage. It is merely a type of coloring in the process of painting. Applying the color of raw lacquer is not based on any novel ideas. It originated in one of my experiments, that is, how to better arrange the colors in painting.

　　My biggest concern often goes to the technical issues in art as a phase of crafts rather than the endless repulsive jargon of art. Those so-called new concepts, new periodizations, and new missions, which someone dreamt up in frenzy, will do no good to our paintings. In fact, nothing special in our artistic creation requires the explanations of new terms.④

　　Mr. Su takes the extreme non-Expressionism in the techniques of craftsmanship as his “reserve standpoint” in art. Transplanting the perspective of such a technically “reserve” art into the current context of art, we will discover that it is consistent neither with the discourse pattern in which avant-garde art expands its significances nor with the discourse mode in which fashionable art diffuses its images. In this sense, the “reserve” conveys a critical pertinence to contemporary Chinese art. I have discussed in my article, “Maximalism in China,” some artists’ expression of this reserve, non-Expressionist, anti-significance-overflow standpoints in creation and criticism by such maximal means as process, repetition, and handiwork. So, “return to craftsmanship,” as a reserve standpoint in criticism, is not equal to the artist’s

　　real engagement in craftsmanship. Nevertheless, Mr. Su’s uniqueness lies in his earnest and down-to-earth attempt to convert traditional crafts to painterliness. In other words, his ultimate focus is set still on significance—nothing but a more extreme variety of extra-verbal significance.

　　Mr. Su’s reserve, artisanal creation aims at a verbally inexpressible “meaning,” the meaning that remains imageless and can only be sensed in vision or even touch.

　　It is actually through multiple paradoxes that this “meaning” has been expressed. The task for the artist is to carry these paradoxes to the extremes, yet betraying no intention at all.

　　First of all, to do paintings through the process of craftsmanship is itself a paradox. Lacquerership is generally intended for utensils. But what Mr. Su creates with complicated lacquerership are not utensils. Instead, they are “paintings.” Therefore, traditional lacquerership has been divested of its practical utility, whereas the non-Expressionist process and techniques have to perform the “expressive” function.

　　Of course, lacquerership may also be used to produce the lacquer painting, which is a type of decorative handiwork. But Mr. Su’s “lacquer painting” not only refuses to present any significance and avoids developing any narrative but also refrains from pleasing the viewer’s eyes with decorative forms. Mr. Su did not paint these “paintings.” He just sketched on the plate some simple figures like circles, stripes, or squares, which are but constituents of the composition and do not assume any profound significance of the universe or structuralism, before he applied lacquer and pasted linen. They are just part of the lacquer —this carrier of a substance that can “speak” by itself. Lacquer speaks in its own clear brightness, its fluid blackness, its thick heaviness, and its irreplaceable quality. Some, for instance, have argued that the best colors in the world are the white of Xuan paper and the black of lacquer. Because these two colors are at once rich and reserved in meaning and, owing to their singularity, defy substitution. The phrase, “as black as lacquer,” limns the very aesthetic nature of lacquer. Indeed, it is black in the extreme, most beautiful, and surrealist way. That is why the Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty would animate the birds that he painted by putting in their eyes pupils drawn in lacquer.

　　Yet another paradox lies in taste. Since traditional lacquerware were almost exclusive to the aristocracy, its glossiness and exquisiteness always bespeak “wealth and abundance.” The earliest lacquerwork was found in Hemudu Culture, which dates back to about seven millennia ago, in Zhejiang Province. In those olden days, the function of lacquerware was identical to that of bronzeware and also served the purpose of rites and rituals. Besides, we know from literature that in the period of Warring States, there were royal workshops for lacquerware. Zhuang Zi, the great Taoist philosopher, once was the official in charge of one of them.

　　But in his artworks, Mr. Su has converted the aristocratic appetite to a taste peculiar to the “literati.” He has rubbed and darkened the gloss of raw lacquer and, through the chemical reaction of synthesis, turned the blackness into a complicated grey in color tone. Thus he has changed the standardized procedure of craftsmanship to an individualized experience. So the process of artistic creation has been a dialogue with lacquer and a discovery of the surprised joy of fortuity in the repetition of rubbing, polishing, and harmonizing. This surprised joy marks the entry into another world. Like the topographic bleakness that a Chinese writer-painter has finally conjured up on a sheet of Xuan paper, the rubbed color of lacquer bears striking resemblances to the ink running and the freehand sketching in wash paintings.

　　On the other hand, never can such a reserve bedim the splendor of Mr. Su’s

　　artworks in visual presentation. By combining his painting with thousands of tiles, he has displayed the splendor of (the majesty of) lacquer.

　　Evidently, living a reserve life or holding reserve views does not entail the inability to create splendor. And splendor itself is equal not to massiveness but to kein Ende, which is invisible. Such kein Ende does not all derive from artworks but is related to the artist’s living and working space. Just as Mr. Xiaobai Su has observed, we should judge an artist not only by his works but also by his studio. In fact, in our age of post-industrialization, the relations between art and the artist can be satisfactorily summarized not in the saying, “The painting betrays the artist’s thoughts,” but in “The studio betrays the artist’s thoughts.” We may even safely go further and say that the artistic character of an artist ought not to be evaluated by his works alone but to be inspected by his whole artistic life.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Beijing

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　4th November 2008

　　① 770-476 BCE

　　② Literally “an examination record of craftsmen,” it is the substitute for the missing chapter “Dong Guan” (“winter, the minister”) of Zhou Li (“the rites and rituals of the Zhou Dynasty”).

　　③ Some scholars of Confucian classicism believed that “the five materials” are metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Others, represented by Zheng Xuan of the Eastern Han Dynasty, thought that the term refers to metal, wood, skin, jade, and earth.

　　④ Baixi,. “A Talk with Xiaobai Su: The Artworks Are the Artist’s Life.” 2006.