【知学术】陈福善研究论文发布（三）：Dr.David Carrier
汇聚高知性人类
打造创造分享殿堂
【学 术 发 布】
为解开陈福善之谜，知美术馆学术部邀请国内外年轻学者，从艺术史、东西方美学、社会学，图像学等各个维度分解研究，系统打造了一套“知”style学术方法论。
今 日 发 布
《Sheltering Harbour - Turqoise Sea.
Luis Chan- a Great Chinese Modernist Painter》
《从宁静避风港到绿松石海
陈福善，卓绝的中国现代主义画家》
学 者 简 介
Dr.David Carrier
大卫·卡里尔教授
当代美国著名艺术理论家，哥伦比亚大学哲学博士。任教于卡耐基梅隆大学，从事哲学及艺术史教学。曾出版《艺术史写作》、《普桑绘画》、《抽象派绘画》、《艺术博物馆》、《查尔斯·波德莱尔的艺术批评》、《连环画》、《安迪·沃霍尔》以及画家《肖恩·斯卡利》和《劳伦斯·卡罗尔》，其中两本书已被译成中文。是公认的研究普桑及安迪.沃霍尔的图像专家。自1980年以来，曾在Artforum、伯灵顿杂志、国际艺术及包括《中国当代艺术杂志》在内的多家专业期刊上发表评论，曾担任第二届北京国际艺术双年展的外籍评审员。
Chan is a truly modernist painter. Being a modernist at that time was inherently difficult, since what was called for was breaking with entrenched tradition. That said, in one significant way his situation was more difficult than that of most Westerners, who reacted against their pre-modern tradition; instead he learnt to deal with both the Western and Chinese heritages.
——Dr.David Carrier
In order to understand the grand tradition of painting,it’s essential to see both some commonalities of the visual heritage of these two very different cultures,East and West,and,also,note some of their differences.And thus,in order to grasp Luis Chan’s accomplishment,and true greatness-I would like to start with a very quickly sketched historical perspective.
What defines modernism in the Western art world is the replacement of the top-down patronage of the old age,with the establishment of the public art museum,the commercial art gallery and,of course,the birth of art criticism.At that time around the beginning of the 20th century,the art world seemingly started to become global,which is to say that previously separate visual cultures were connected–artworks and also artists traveled everywhere;Asian artists came to the West,Europeans travelled East,and art from Asia was not only collected in European museums,but also left a strong mark on the Western artists practicing at turn of the past century.It is therefore fair to say,that Chan’s career can be placed within these broad cultural movements,that made it possible for artists like him residing in Asia to have a sophisticated knowledge of and access to‘en vogue’Western painting.
The formation of the modern art world in China is,of course,very different from that of Europe.Like the West,China,has a long,highly sophisticated art history,and so the obvious concern for ambitious modernist Chinese painters was of the same origin:how to integrate influences,sometimes assimilate,modify and extend that foreign tradition,in ways which acknowledged the distinctive values of their own ways of thinking.
Luis CHAN
In China,the old world effectively ended in 1911,when the last emperor was deposed-about the same time modernity,fueled through new inventions and technologies,took hold of the West.But the political uproar of the next few decades in China meant that the development of Chinese art was extremely difficult.Some artists from China migrated to the West while others emigrated to Asian Chinese speaking societies.Chan,born in Panama in 1905,lived and worked from 1910 in Hong Kong;never in later life,traveling much,he died there in 1995.It’s customary for historians of contemporary Chinese art to distinguish artists working in Hong Kong(or other places outside of the mainland)from those in the People’s Republic,which had a very different history.For Chan,that provincial but highly cosmopolitan colonial culture proved to be the right home for an ambitious artist concerned with this synthesis of traditions;given freedom to develop,he used that situation,in which he developed his very wide ranging sympathetic feeling for Western painting,to his advantage.
Luis CHAN Publication | © ZHI ART MUSEUM
In the West,the history of painting from the early Renaissance through to modernism is by many best understood as the story of the gradual perfection of Naturalism.From Giotto through to Cubism,artists were concerned with what the greatest historian of this tradition,E.H.Gombrich,called‘making-and-matching’:the development of ever more‘complete’representations.In Chan’s marvelously lucid essay“My Perspective on Art”(published in Wah Kiu Yat Po,6 December,1933)he traces that story,in terms that echo Gombrich’s and anticipate the later development of his own art.Rejecting the view that painting merely imitates nature-like some earlier Western artists he is responding,in part,to photography–he considers how art can be a form of personal expression and,also,how it can draw upon experience of nature to create decoration.These are very familiar to Western modernist categories.Although Chan doesn’t name many names,it’s natural to recognize that he responded to the art of Vincent van Gogh,early Wassily Kandinsky,and also early Henri Matisse.And when Chan says that an artist cannot ignore nature he identifies a common concern of traditional Western and Chinese art.But where Kandinsky moved quickly early on to pure abstraction,Chan generally chose to paint figurative scenes,like Fantasy Village with Pine Tree(1970),which shows a landscape framed by trees.Often these scenes were spectacularly unreal-looking.In Ping Chau(1976),for example,we see fantastical animals and buildings set against an all-over golden background.
Some years ago,when I was teaching art history in Beijing at Tsinghua University and the Central Academy of Art,I traveled to Germany,to participate in a conference celebrating the hundredth-year since Gombrich’s birth.I was interested in whether Gombrich’s account of the development of Western Naturalism applied also to Chinese art,a theme,which is highly relevant here to understanding Chan’s career.Gombrich himself never got to China;in 1989 in response to the political events,he cancelled a planned trip.And so the question of whether his account applies to art in China was left unanswered.
Old master Chinese pictures look very different from their Western counterparts–many of them are painted with ink brush on long horizontal or vertical scrolls.And of course some of the landscapes themselves look unlike those found in Europe.But,it is arguable,that these are relatively superficial differences.The history of art in China,as in Europe,is the story of progress in Naturalism;China,however,perfected illusionism earlier.And so,for our immediate present purposes,what matters,extending that East-West parallel,is understanding how Chan’s synthesis of Chinese and Western traditions also draws on these parallels.
Oil on Board|40 x 50 cm
Luis Chan Trust Collection
In the 1960s,employing the English watercolor tradition,Chan painted figurative Hong Kong scenes.His Junk with Red Sail(1960)is one good example;here already his high-pitched colors in the sky reveal his taste for fantasy.And Untitled(Sheltering Harbour,Turquoise Sea)(1960)is another-here his expressionist technique appears indebted to AndréDerain.Until this time,Chan has said,he was a realist painter.But“since then I have been experimenting with new painting techniques.”
I can think of very few artists who in early middle age became so adventuresome.In an astonishing rapid personal development,by the 1980s he was depicting figures,which owe something to James Ensor(as Nigel Cameron noted)and also,I think,Gabriele Münter,as in the remarkable early Hillside Town with Pink Temple(1955-65).He developed compositions which derive from Surrealism and also surely from his long-time fascination with cinema and also perhaps,more recently,television.And often his later compositions have the sense of fantastical theater sets.
What’s most striking is the variety of resources,which Chan found in Western painting.Consider,for example,The Green Bridge(1980),with flat monochromatic surfaces in the background,and decorative fabrics,like those found in some fauve pictures,with the gorgeous garments of the figures mostly shown in profile.Or look at Scholar’s Romance(1968)where we see some human bodies distorted,so that they blend into the decorative background.Or consider Magician(1987),in which the broad vertical stripes of the figures in the background owe something to Henri Matisse’s odalisques.(Chan,however,has a very different attitude towards his human figures,with their pink faces complimenting the decorative fabrics.)You can feel how important musical improvisation was for Chan,who loves flat,artificially lit landscapes,and enjoys painting fantastic costumes in bright colors.Often we see him combine landscapes and human figures in marvelous ways,as in Fantasy Landscape with Mother and Child(1970),in which the figures are gathered together at the center of a landscape,with some houses in the background.And in at least one untitled work from 1978 Chan collages a sequence of separate images,seemingly like a film strip.We feel that the worlds the artist creates are essentially dream worlds.After all,as he said near the end of his life,“Above all else,art has to stimulate the imagination.”His own painting is always constantly stimulating.
Untitled (Nude on the Balcony)|1978
Mixed Media and Collage on Paper|79 x 55 cm
Luis Chan Trust Collection
Gombrich described caricature as one way of extending the Western tradition,once Naturalism no longer was a central concern.Chan’s expressionist pictures,and his artificial,high-pitched color has obvious affinities with caricature in European early modernism.And his use of fragmentation shows that he was looking at Cubism.The distorted bodies of his brightly colored nudes in landscapes in visionary colors owe something to German Expressionism.And his hand scroll,Santa Claus Visiting My Studio,uses a very Chinese medium and a very Western subject painted in a style that draws on both traditions.
Santa Claus Visiting My Studio(Local) | 1981
Ink&colour on paper | 45×2039
© Hong Kong Museum of Art
Sometimes Chan places his figures in box-shaped forms,which seem to derive from Francis Bacon.But so far as I can see,the Western tradition of pure abstraction running from Piet Mondrian through to Jackson Pollock and some works of Willem de Kooning was of lesser interest to Chan.Traditional Chinese art sometimes flirted with abstraction,but the artists never fully embraced that way of thinking.Even many of the fantastical elements in Chinese landscapes are grounded in visual experience.Once when I made a pilgrimage to Southern China to see the famous high-peaked mountains I knew from depictions,I was astonished to see that indeed they look exactly as in these representations.The mountains in Untitled(Fantasy Landscape with White Rhinoceros)(1972)also resemble them.Even when Chinese landscape painting looks fantastical,often it was grounded in immediate observation.In never consistently pursuing abstraction,Chan follows these traditions of China.
Ink and Colour on Paper|69 x 136 cm
BAO Collection
Chan’s development certainly was highly complicated.I know of few artists who in old age were as supple or imaginative.Fantasy Village with Pine Tree(1970)depicts a landscape not entirely unlike those in some Ming dynasty scrolls,but at least one work from the same year,Fantasy Island with Turretted Towers is strikingly unlike any traditional Chinese paintings.Fantasy Landscape with White Rhinoceros(1972)is a work more closely akin to the fantastic scenes of Hieronymus Bosch than traditional Chinese landscapes.(Chan often loves depicting fantastical animals,like the extraordinary beasts in 3 Dragons(1969).And he paints some marvelous fish.)At least one of his more recent landscapes with its flat background resembles David Hockney’s work.And then in his Untitled(A Three Storey-Landscape)(1978)markings are collaged onto a brightly colored perspectival construction,not unlike the structures found in of some American abstractions of this time.
Untitled (Art exhibition)|1978
Mixed Media and Collage on Paper|79 x 59 cm
Luis Chan Trust Collection
In drawing attention to these parallels between the previously distinct European and Chinese visual traditions,and observing the ways that Chan negotiated his personal development,I would not aim to undercut either the importance of that achievement,or the originality of his art.When,for example,he said,
I first create arbitrary'marks'on a surface with a zinc plate,then I paint according to the images suggested by the marks.It is difficult to tell why one stops here or elaborates there;one proceeds from experience,I suppose,guided by subconscious intuition.You know,if I were given a blank surface without any'marks',I wouldn't be able to paint at all.That's my trade secret!
Then it’s obvious that he describes a distinctively Chinese style of art making,which,it is true,has some analogies in Western tradition–Leonardo da Vinci also was interested in chance procedures.What ultimately is most amazing,I believe,is how from this very rich array of influences Chan created a highly distinctive form of painting.His depicted animals and human figures sit in dreamscapes,his images involve the suspension of time,and he loves fantastic costumes-Dream Bird(1973),with the white bird in profile on a highly artificial pink background,beneath a yellow sky is one extraordinary example.
Chan once wrote:only art that is imbued with emotional richness and expressive depth can really move and excite the viewer,instilling a sense of empathy with the artist and an admiration and respect for him that deepens with time.
Luis CHAN | © Data
Chan is a truly modernist painter.Being a modernist at that time was inherently difficult,since what was called for was breaking with entrenched tradition.That said,in one significant way his situation was more difficult than that of most Westerners,who reacted against their pre-modern tradition;instead he learnt to deal with both the Western and Chinese heritages.
When Chan was eighty he said,“I am making new discoveries....I am still learning to paint better.”His truly was an amazing career.Right now his ongoing radical stylistic experimentation,and his refusal to ever settle down make a model for contemporary artists everywhere.
从东西方截然不同的文化中，去捕捉视觉遗产的共性和差异对理解艺术的宏伟历史而言至关重要。因此，我将从历史视角来快速勾勒陈福善的大师之作。
在古代西方，艺术是一种源于上流社会的自上而下的传播，但公共艺术馆的建立、商业艺术画廊的出现以及艺术评论的诞生，改变了这种方式，自此产生了西方艺术界的现代主义。大概20世纪初，那时的艺术界看似正趋于全球化，以前分离出来的视觉文化都和美术作品相联系并且艺术家们都去周游世界，像一些亚洲画家会去西方，欧洲画家会去东方。亚洲艺术并不仅仅陈列在欧洲的博物馆内，同样也在上世纪初对西方的艺术家造成重大影响。因此说陈福善是在这些重大文化运动中所诞生的也不为过，因为这为像他一样定居在的亚洲的艺术家接触“时兴”的西方绘画提供了可能性。
当然，中国现代艺术界的形成与欧洲大相径庭。和西方一样，中国也有着悠久且高度造诣的艺术史，因此有抱负的中国现代主义画家们所关心的问题与西方画家有着相同点：怎样融合外来影响，或者说怎样吸收、修正以及延展外来习惯，以此体现出自我思考方式的独特价值。
年轻时的陈福善 | 图源资料
中国的封建时期结束于1911年，废黜了最后一任帝王。几乎于同一时间，现代主义伴随着新发明和新技术的兴起迅速席卷了西方并成为主流，但接下来的数十年中，动荡的政治格局却成为中国艺术发展的一大障碍。在这期间，一些中国的艺术家去了西方移民，而其他的则移居到以中文为母语的亚洲社会。陈福善1905年生于巴拿马，自1910年开始在香港生活和工作；晚年也定居此地未四处飘游，并于1995年与世长辞。对于中国当代艺术的史学家来说，他们习惯于将在香港（或大陆以外的其他地方）工作的艺术家同历史背景完全不同的大陆艺术家相区分。就陈福善而言，香港虽然独处一隅，但它极具包容性的殖民文化无疑是滋养一个关注多传统融合且拥有雄心壮志的艺术家的天然土壤。陈福善充分利用其自由发展的氛围来充分进步他的西方画技。
陈福善出版物 | 图源©知美术馆
在西方，从早期的文艺复兴到现代主义，对艺术历史的最佳理解是自然主义的逐步完善。从乔托到立体派，艺术家们的关注点在谁是最伟大的历史学家，像贡布里希被称作“创造与匹配”，即日益“完美”的代表。在陈福善极其深入浅出的文章《对于艺术之我见》中，他深入研究了这个问题，最终得出结论是贡布里希，同时预见了他自己之后的艺术道路。他否定绘画只不过是在临摹自然的观点，这和他回应一些早期的西方艺术家对于摄影的概念如出一辙。他认为艺术可以是个人表达的一种形式，也是利用自然来创造装饰物，而这和西方现代主义者的范畴相似。尽管陈福善并没有为他的作品大幅命名，但显而易见是在呼应文森特.梵高，早期的康定斯基，和早期的亨利·马蒂斯。他所说的一个艺术家不可忽视自然，直指出传统的东西方艺术共同关注的焦点。但当康定斯基快速转向纯抽象的领域时，陈福善只是在画象征性的一些场景，像是《松树奇镇》（1970）里的景都是用树木来完成的构架，而这些场景经常是宏大而虚幻的。
几年前，当我在北京的清华大学和中央美术学院教授美术历史时，我去到德国参加一个纪念贡布里希百年诞辰的大会。我对于贡布里希在西方自然主义的推动是否同样适用于中国艺术这一话题颇感兴趣，这同样也和理解陈福善的艺术生涯联系紧密。在1989年的政治运动中，贡布里希取消了到访行程，他一生都未曾到过中国，所以是否同样对中国艺术造成影响也不尽可知。
中国古代名作和相应的西方画作看起来大相径庭——因为国画大部分是用毛笔在水平或垂直的长卷轴上作画。因此绘制出的一些景观和它们实际上在欧洲见到的不一样。但有争议的是这些都是表面现象，中国的艺术历史和欧洲一样，是自然主义的进化史，但中国却先于欧洲完善写意。所以，对于增强东西共通性，重点在于了解陈福善是怎样将自身的背景应用于此。
上世纪60年代，陈福善运用英国水彩技法绘制了大量的香港景象。他的作品《红帆舢板》（1960）就是一个很好的例子，他大力涂抹的天空色彩已经可以彰显出他的魔幻风格。作品《无题（碧海港湾）》（1960）是另一个佐证，可以看到他的表现主义技法承袭于法国画家安德列·德兰。直到这个时期，陈福善才说他自己是一个现实主义画家，但同时“从那时起，我一直在尝试运用新的绘画技法”。
《无题》（筲箕湾）|1960|油彩 木板|40 x 50 cm|艺术家家族珍藏
我几乎想不出来有哪些艺术家会在他们的中青年时期如此激进冒险。陈福善的个人成长速度令人惊叹，到19世纪80年代，他就因早期名作《小镇山坡上的粉色寺庙》（1955-65）成为一个可圈可点的人物了，我认为这要归功于詹姆斯·恩索尔（金马伦注） 和加布里埃尔·穆特的影响。他创造艺术作品的灵感源于超现实主义，以及他长期对电影的痴迷，更近一点，也许还有电视的影响。他后期的作品经常会给人魔幻剧集的感觉。
最显著的是他在西方画作中学到的素材多样化。例如，《绿桥》（1980）运用了单一平面的背景色和装饰性衣物，就像我们在一些野兽派画作中经常看到的着华丽服装的人物造型一样。再比如，《文人情史》（1968），我们看到人物的身体是扭曲的，以融合进装饰性的背景中。还有《魔术师》（1987），背景中人物身上大幅的竖条纹风格源于亨利·马蒂斯的女仆作品。（但是陈福善对其人物造型的态度与马斯蒂截然不同，他会使用粉色的面庞来衬托这些装饰条纹的衣物。）可见类似即兴创作音乐的技法对陈福善来说有多重要，他钟爱平面的、刻意调亮的风景，喜欢明亮色调的奇装异服。我们经常可以看到他把风景与人物进行令人惊叹的组合，就像在画作《幻境与母子》（1970）中，背景是一些房子，人物聚集在风景的中心位置。从1978年开始，陈福善至少在一副无题作品中使用了一系列单独的形象排列拼接，就像电影胶片一样。他创造的世界总让我们感觉是梦中的世界。毕竟，就像他在生命终结前所说的那样，“艺术比什么都能激发想象力”，他的画作也一直论证着这句话。
《无题》（阳台上的裸女）|1978|综合材料 拼贴 纸本|79 x 55 cm|艺术家家族珍藏
当自然主义不再是焦点，贡布里希将讽刺漫画描述为延续西方传统的一种方式。陈福善的表现主义画作，以及他虚幻而尖锐的用色都和欧洲早期的现代主义讽刺漫画密切相关，而他所用的分裂手法则体现出其在立体主义上的研究。他的风景画用色虚幻，多彩的裸体上是扭曲的四肢，这都或多或少归因于德国表现主义。他的手轴《圣诞老人拜访图》同时使用了中式手法及西式主题，兼具两种风格。
《圣诞老人拜访图》局部|1981|45×2039cm|塑彩 纸本| 香港艺术馆收藏
有时，陈福善将他的人物放在一个盒型的架构中，这一手法像是源自弗朗西斯.培根。但我认为从蒙德里安到杰克逊.波洛克以及威廉.德.库宁的一些作品，就西方传统的纯抽象而言，都不及陈福善的有趣。传统的中国艺术有时也有抽象元素，但是中国艺术家们并不完全接纳这种思想，甚至可以说很多中国风景画中的奇幻元素仍是基于视觉体验的。曾经我游历到中国南部去看曾在画作中见过的著名山峰，我很惊讶地发现它们真的和画里一样。画作《无题（海底花园奇景）》中的山也与其相似，所以，即使一幅中国风景画看起来很虚幻，它其实也是基于当下的观察。陈福善一直遵循着中国画的此种传统，从未完全追求抽象。
《无题》（海底花园奇景）|1972|彩墨 纸本|69 x 136 cm|BAO私人收藏
陈福善画作的发展是极为复杂的。在我的概念里，很少有艺术家在晚年还保持着如此的想象力和流畅度。尽管《松树奇镇》（1970）所描绘的和明朝卷轴画里的不尽相同，但起码也是同年的作品，而《幻岛炮塔》却是和传统的中国画作有着天壤之别。相较于传统的中国画，《幻境与白犀牛》（1972）则和希罗尼穆师.博斯的画作更为贴近，因为陈福善经常喜欢画怪诞的动物，像是《三条龙》（1969）里描绘的便是奇特的野兽，且里面也画了些奇怪的鱼。但至少在他最近的画作中，单一的背景和霍克尼是极为相近的。后面在他1978年的《无题》（画展）中，所有标记被拼贴到一个色彩鲜亮的视角化架构中，而不像是同期的一些美国抽象画作。
《无题》（画展）|1978|综合材料 拼贴 纸本|79 x 59 cm|艺术家家族珍藏
当关注到在挖掘原来欧洲和中国的视觉传统的相似之处及陈福善的个人发展时，我不会去削减他成就的重要性和作品的原创性。举个例子来说，他曾说：
当我第一次在锌板上创建任意标记再根据标记来作图时，很难区分这些标记：为什么这个在这儿断掉了又在那里出现；另一个由经验顺带出来的，我猜是潜意识里带出来的。你要明白，如果我在白纸上没有任何标记，我甚至都无法作画，这就是我的专业秘密！
那么他在西方的艺术传统中，找与典型的中国风格的画作的相似之处也就显而易见了，莱昂纳多.达芬奇也对几率程序很感兴趣。我认为最不可思议的是去挖掘陈福善是怎样在这些复杂的影响因素中去创造极具特色的绘画形式。他在幻景里描绘的人和动物是有时间的缩影的，而且他爱怪诞的装束，像是1973年的《梦幻之鸟》便是个典型的例子：在一片黄色的天空之下，白鸟的侧颜是以虚幻的粉色为背景。
陈福善曾写：只有灌以丰盈情感和深刻表达的艺术才得以打动并感染观众，只有对画家加以感情，欣赏和尊重，作品才得以深远。
陈福善是一位真正意义上的画家，在那时，做现代主义者本身就很困难，因为其所提倡的是要打破根深蒂固的传统，也就是说，他的处境比大多数的西方现代主义反叛者更加困难，因为他得兼顾双方。
陈福善80岁时说：“我还在寻找新的发现……我仍在探索更佳的画法。”他的确非常了不起。如今，他突破常规的风格和持续创新的精神成为全世界的艺术家的楷模。
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