吴永强：“乱笔”中的织光

Weaving light and time through “random strokes”

by Wu Rongqiang, professor at Sichuan University, Ph.D. supervisor

　　凡是与高峡有过交集的人，都难以不把他与艺术家的形象联系起来，而不论其交集是凭   了什么机缘、在什么场合和采取了什么样的方式。我与高峡的结识，一开始便伴随着这样的   观感，虽然直到最近，我才第一次见到他的作品。贡布里希在《艺术的故事》一书的开篇就   写道：“没有艺术这回事，只有艺术家而已。”这是要提请大家注意，艺术的故事不过是艺   术家的故事。回想与高峡交往的前前后后，我感到，贡布里希的格言又增添了一条证据。

　　If you know Gao Xia, it’s hard not to link him with the image of an artist, no matter when and how you met him; I felt this way when I first met him, even though it’s not until recently I saw his works. Ernest H. Gombrich wrote in his book “The story of Art”: “There is no such thing called art, there is only the artist.” It reminds us that the story of art is actually the story of the artist. My encounter with Gao Xia proves his statement.

　　由于参与本次展览的筹划，我才有了一个机会，得以走进高峡的工作室，虽然这只是他最近一个时期在成都临时启用的工作室。一进门，但见满屋子的画，有风景，有肖像，有油画，有素描，有较大尺幅的作品，也有尺牍般的小品。其中风景画最多，也留给我印象最深。   这些风景画并非一时一地画成，而是来自于高峡多年来游走世界各地的旅途，有着极大的时间和空间跨度，包含了丰富的信息。如果我们对这些作品展开一番图像学调查，可能会从中获悉更多关于“艺术家的故事”，甚至，它们也不必是艺术家的故事，而是外延更广的关于一个人的故事，与高峡的个人生活史紧密相连。这些作品告诉我们，虽然走过许多路，扮过许多角色，见过许多人，做过许多事，可是不论路有多远，角色跨度有多大，也不论事情的起因是否与艺术有关，高峡都始终不愿停止手中的画笔。这使其游走世界的经历被染上了艺术的颜色，久而久之，高峡生活的故事就成了一个艺术家的故事。

　　I had the chance to be at Gao Xia’s studio as I’m working on the planning for his Solo Exhibition. Even though this is a temporarily studio he set up in Chengdu recently, once I entered the room, I was struck by a room full of paintings - landscape, portraits, oil painting, sketches, large canvases, small canvases. Among them paintings, landscape

　　are the majority and also the most impressive. These landscape paintings were not created at one time or one location, they were created over a long time period and during his travelling around the world. They cover a wide range of time and space; also reflect a wide range of subjects. If we study these paintings, we’ll find the “story of the artist”. If it’s not a story of an artist, it’s a story of a person, which is connected to Gao Xia’s life experience. His paintings tell us: no matter how many roads we’ve walked, how many roles we’ve played, how many people we’ve met, how many things we’ve done; no matter how far the roads are, how diverse the roles are, whether things are related to art or not, Gao Xia never stopped painting. Therefore, his travelling around the world represents an artist’s journey, the story of Gao Xia’s life is the story of an artist’s life.

　　在生活中，高峡是一位爽朗、健谈、性格鲜明的人。这个特点在他的作品中留下了烙印。无论是描绘肖像还是表现风景，他的画面都好似爆发出一种强烈的倾诉欲，用笔急速、用色汹涌，并伴随着纷繁缭乱的线条。就像画者急于把眼中看到的、耳朵听到的和内心感受到的一切，一股脑儿告诉给预想中的观者。在这种倾诉欲的支配下，他的线条——没错，是线条——密密匝匝，争先恐后，互不忍让，万斛泉涌般地，在画面中纠缠、奔突和冲撞，直到引起骚乱，以至于使造型、色彩、结构的作用都退居其后。画家将心中无法按捺的激情寄托于线条的冲动。由于这种冲动，他常常来不及掩盖起稿阶段动用铅笔的痕迹；也由于这种冲动，   其色彩节奏呈现出线性运动的风格。在他的画面中，笔触的分离多于团圆，色彩的反差大于调和。他用重叠而交错的色线，来深耕土地，密织草场、森林、花海和田野；他用简狂而疏放的线条，来叫醒天空，搅动湖海、树影与风响，并回应城镇、建筑物和街道的颜色。

　　In life, Gao Xia is very talkative, straightforward and has a strong personality. These characteristics are revealed in his paintings. When looking at his paintings, either portraits or landscape, we feel he’s eager to communicate with us: with his powerful strokes, his bold colors and his free lines. It’s like the painter is trying to tell us what he saw, heard and felt. Driven by the urge to communicate, his lines, yes, lines, are condense and frenetic, they are struggling, running and dashing till they cause chaos; then the forms, colors and structure all recede. He puts all his passion into his dynamic lines. Due to this impulse, he leaves unmasked initial pencil traces; his colors begin to dance. In his paintings, the strokes are far apart instead of being close together, the colors are more contrasting than harmonious. With the overlapping lines and colors, he created the soil, the grassland, the forests, the flowers and the fields ； with simple, wild and free lines, he created the　awakening skies, turbulent ocean, shadow of trees and the sound of wind, they echo the colors of the cities, buildings and streets.

　　显而易见，高峡的风景画拖着印象派的尾音，其分离的笔触和高纯度的色彩证明了这一点。不过，它们却不常有印象派画中的那种干净、漂亮和按色光原理行事的酸爽，甚至印象   派所青睐的户外明媚的阳光，也并不常见于他的画面。面对他所给出的风景，我们有时甚至   分不清那是在阴天还是在阳光灿烂的日子，是雨中还是骤雨初歇。原来，印象派画下的是眼   中的风景，而高峡画下的是心中的风景，其根本的分歧就在于此。高峡用了激情的眼睛来搜   索风景，然后用自己独有的话语方式急切地讲述其见闻和身体的感应，他画下的不是某一片   风景本身，而是关于这一片风景的叙事，其言语的冲动胜于对景物的再现。印象派漂亮的画   面，是眼睛对风景过滤的结果；高峡的画面却是激情与身体知觉纠结起来，一起去会见风景   的产物。其体验的成分过于复杂，内容过于丰富，本来只可意会而不可言传，但在一种倾诉   欲的逼迫下，作者偏偏要将其付诸表达。他采取的言语方式是视觉与图像，并以线条的冲动   来加以接应。除了自在的手感，至于造型的精致、色彩的考究和用笔的潇洒，统统不在其考   虑之列。然而就在此刻，一种属于高峡个人的绘画风格诞生出来了，让我们见证到一种别样   的“乱笔”风格。这种风格捕捉了自然的光线，也编织了人生的时光。它以其统一的格调为   其风景画、肖像画和别的题材的绘画所分享，让它们共同笼罩着表现主义的织光。

　　Obviously, Gao Xia’s paintings reflect the traces of impressionists, his isolated strokes and saturated colors prove it. However, we can’t find the clean, pretty and rigid adherence to the rules of lighting, nor can we see the bright sun outdoors which can be easily found in impressionists’ paintings. From Gao Xia’s paintings, we can’t tell if it’s a cloudy day or a sunny day from some of his paintings, nor can we tell either it’s during the rain or it’s when the rains just stopped. In the end, impressionists paint what they see; Gao Xiao paints what he feels, that’s what the difference is. Gao Xia uses his passionate eyes to uncover beauty, then depicts what he sees and what he feels with his unique language, what he paints is not just the scenery, but the story of the scenery; his mood on the strokes overpower recreation of the subjects. The paintings of impressionists are the result of their filtered eyes; but the paintings of Gao Xia are the result of his passion and sensual experience of the subject. We can feel the complexity of his experience and the richness of his subjects. Rather than being kept inside, all these inner feelings are expressed to the public. The language he chooses is image and impression, combined with lively lines. While we can feel his pleasure in the act of painting, he throws out most

　　traditions and rules: the arrangement of the forms, deliberateness of the colors and the rigid details are nowhere to be found. That’s how we see the distinctive style of Gao Xia - a unique style of “Random Strokes”. This style captures the light and weaving of time and life and is represented in all his paintings, whether landscape, portraits or other paintings. In Gao Xiao’s paintings, we feel the emotion, the passing of time and the life of the world we are living in.

　　然而我们倾向于把高峡主要看成是一位风景画家，这不仅因为风景画在他的作品中数量最多，还因为风景在他的人生历程和艺术生涯中有着重要的意义。我们知道，风景画是城市化、商业化和近代科技文明发展的产物，是人类鉴于其在走向现代文明的进程中破坏了人与自然的原始关系而企图重建这一关系的美学投射。自 16 世纪风景画在尼德兰诞生以来，曾经依次作为土地的怀想、圣哲的象征、人文的坐标和田园的意象而呈现，尔后又作为领地扩张的图标、浪漫情怀的寓所、崇高精神的幻境以及生态意识与环境保护主义的写照而现身。   然而历数其目的性，风景画的焦点目标不外乎重返大地，因应野性的呼唤。遥想上古时代，   我们的祖先出于生存与安全需要，在森林中采集，在草原上狩猎，在洞穴中隐蔽，在平地上结庐而居，由此养成了亲近大地的情感，并任由其内容作为潜意识积淀，赋予人类集体以一种返祖情结。这也许就是风景产生吸引力的根源。当城市化阻断了人与自然风景的联系，人造的风景——风景画和风景园林——便诞生出来，实质上是通过唤醒返祖情结，来抗议城市扩张的暴力，追寻失去的伊甸园。联系高峡的人生经历与对风景画的爱好，我感到，在机缘巧合的情况下，人类个体的某些经验将重现人类集体的记忆。

　　If we tend to regard Gao Xia as a landscape painter, it’s because most of his paintings are landscapes, it’s also because landscape is important in his life and art career. As we know, landscape paintings are the product of the development of modernization, commercialization and technology; it’s also the artistic endeavor to salvage  the relationship between human and nature which has been destroyed by industrialization. Since the 16th century when landscape paintings were started in Netherlands, they have been used as a remembrance of the land, the symbol of sages and philosophers, the foundation for humanism and images of the pastoral; later they evolved into the icons of territory expansion, the havens of romantic sentiments, domain of noble thoughts and the portrayal of ecological consciousness and environmentalism. However, the essence of landscape paintings are a return to to nature. In ancient times, due to the need to survive, our ancestors had to search for food in the wildness, go hunting in the forests, hide in the

　　caves and build shelters to live peacefully. From all these activities, humans developed an attachment to nature, and it stayed in our subconsciousness and gradually developed into a nostalgic sentiment to go back to our roots. This is the reason why we are attracted by landscape paintings. When urbanization broke the connection between us and nature, artificial landscape paintings came into being, this is the result of the urge to go back to the old times and to protest the destruction caused by urban expansion and to get back the lost paradise. Thinking of Gao Xiao’s life experience and his love to landscape paintings, I feel that sometimes, an individual’s life experience can convey and reflect the collective memories of all of us.

　　过去数十年，高峡住在城市，又不断在国与国之间来回穿梭。其远游的地方，也主要是   在繁华的大都市。正如我们熟知的情形，每一次远游途中，他都不忘带上画具，并将画笔对   准当地的风景，但它们多半不是城市景观，而是野外、乡村的风景或至少是庭园中的植物与   花朵。这就是说，高峡一面游走于城市，一面寻求着一种对抗城市化规训与污染的出路，就   像人类当初发明风景画的动机一样。他走得越远，寻找回归之路的念头就越强烈。这不仅包   括他对风景画的爱好，也包括他不管正在从事什么行业都对艺术创作的不离不弃。如果说他   的风景画显示了大自然景象中所蕴含的对人类心灵创伤的疗效，那么，在他决不放弃的创作   行为中，我们则看到了人生获得救赎的希望。

　　In the past ten years, Gao Xia lived in many cities and travelled between different countries. Most of the places he travelled to are cosmopolitan. As we can image, on every trip, he brought his painting supplies with him; he painted whichever city he was living in. However, we found that most of his paintings are not about the cities, but about the countryside, the villages, or the plants or flowers in gardens. This shows that as Gao Xia traveled between cities, he was looking for a path away from the urbanization and pollution; it’s the same motives of people creating landscape in the first place. The further he travelled, the more eager he wanted to go back to his roots. This is reflected not just in his love for landscape paintings, but also his persist pursuit of art. If his landscape paintings show the therapeutic impact of nature’s beauty on humans, then we see hope for all of us being saved by his persistent pursuit of art.