正午时分的一场暴雨，将天空变为一片昏黑，在淅淅雨声中，有惊雷在远方炸响。城市隐没在雾霭之中，闪电在瞬间将景物照亮，随即又隐入更重的雨雾之中。
以上文字表达的是一种具体可感的城市景观。但是在这个初夏沉闷的中午，我读到了李昌龙的绘画，却感受到另一种别样的心灵的景观，一种将人物嵌入现实的奇异景观，它似乎与城市有关，但更多的却与现代城市发展中剧烈变化的人的心灵有关。
有关李昌龙的绘画，已经有不少评论者表达了许多有趣的灼见。归纳起来，对于他的绘画的基本描述如下：“有两种元素并存于李昌龙的画面之上：各种有深度空间的场景和真实的人物形象。场景来自于各种图片：自然的风景、工业废墟、战争废墟、灾难事故现场、人造的花园、发展建设或者正在消失毁灭的城市。人物多半是他自己以及自己形象的克隆变体。”（张爱东《无法深入的空间》）
评论者将李昌龙的绘画界定为“重视技术，看重个人私密性带来的体悟，保留绘画史上已经被观众了解和接受的具体要素，同时加入自己的个性和技术哲学中的个人结论。”认为他是这个强烈观念的后现代时代，保持着绘画的尊严的守望者，这些评论给我理解李昌龙的艺术以很大的启发。
但是我更注意的是李昌龙本人对于创作的原始表述：“最近比较喜欢把被仰视的人（大概和我的身高愿望有关）生硬地贴到意象的城市景观、自然景观或心理景观里，处理一种闪与被闪的关系，揑造一种人与景的距离。”
在闪光灯的突然照亮下，李昌龙绘画中的人物，犹如闪电中的定格，给予我们强烈的视觉印象。作为经历过20世纪6、70年代文化革命的过来人，我对于革命样板戏中对反派人物强烈的舞台底光照射有着挥之不去的记忆。那不是一种英雄的光芒，英雄之光是从斜上方照耀下来的红色之光。在李昌龙的绘画草图中，他反复标示出远方的“美景”，这其实是一种可望而不可即的理想。传统绘画中的地平线，在他的绘画中具有特殊的意义，远景的朦胧与近景的杂乱交织为一种尖锐的矛盾，人物虽然身处空间中，却由于闪光灯所造成的巨大阴影而像剪纸一般被贴在了空间之上。这使得他的画面中人与景色处在一种硬性嵌入的格式中，这些人在风景中飘浮不定，闪烁其间，这是现代人不安的灵魂在生存空间中的表达。
以作品为例。《俯视你1》，三个来自不发达地区的青年，如同我们在中国传统寺庙中常见的四大天王，圆睁怒目，俯视着画外的某处，从心理上表现了这一代青年人对于某种现实的观看角度和态度。《俯视你3》，男主角用手电照亮了水中的一对男女，表现了在城市的边缘，秘密的生活为一种巨大的不可预知的力量从高处所窥视。手电筒的光代表了无所不在的监视，与邓箭今的早期作品《深夜来访者》相似，这是一个自由与控制、隐私与规训的现代城市寓言。在李昌龙的绘画中，主要人物常常是被仰视的，类似于我们在中国寺观庙堂中观看天王金刚的感受。但表达的生活，却常常是主体人物从高空中俯视尘世，这一仰一俯之间，表达了艺术家对于生活观察与感受的巨大落差，这种时空的巨大落差常常与城市发展中的剧烈速度相伴随，构成现代人难以释怀的心理意象。李昌龙赋予了空间在当代绘画中所具有的新的意义。
在《2006No.1》中，青年们聚在一起，对着某物在集体撒尿，头发似火焰在燃烧，与刘小东的《烧耗子》相仿，作品表达了某种无言的愤恨与快意的宣泄。在《2006No.3》中，作为主体的画家肖像在画面中成为高大的山峰，站在不知名的海边斜视远方。他们身处的环境十分暧昧，人物在城市和楼房的上空飘浮。《一群在某日黄昏被扒掉衣服的当代艺术爱好者》在山与水之间升腾，支撑他们的是非常可疑的一团云雾。相互依偎和一无所有，让人联想到杜尚的《被光棍们扒掉衣服的新娘》。
《偷渡者》代表了画家的个人心理分析，他在海中无奈地伸出手掌，试图阻挡意外出现的种种各样的摄像机和话筒，这是现代媒体对于个人隐私的集群攻击，闪光灯照亮了个体的惊恐与不安。作为主流社会不成功的边缘生存者，偷渡者试图逃离岸边，但远处的海岸是如此遥远，他的未来并不可知。《这不是我的风景》，一群青年站在高速路边，注视着身旁的蓝色水面，远处是冒着黑烟的城市，近处的水中却生长着巨大怪异的植物，和传统花园里的拱桥形成不和谐的荒凉。李昌龙的作品中充满了这种不祥的怪诞的隐喻。《发展中国家》系列作品，人物站在高山上向下瞭望，暮色中远方的城市灯火迷离，若隐若现，主体人物手持望远镜和摄像机俯身观察，天地苍茫难以辨识。不可知的远方，与地平线是解读李昌龙作品的关键，在他的画面中，人物自膝盖以下从未交待清楚，他们不知道自己的基础所在。他们所处的山头是可疑的，或是天空中飘浮的浓云，随时有解体散去的可能，李昌龙表现了一种大灾难来临之前的不安和一种前途不明的都市青年群聚在一起相互支持的渴望。
在李昌龙的近作中（如2008年在成都举办的《西南的力量》展中的作品），他描绘了一种类似于黑社会性质的场面，一个青年被两个人强按在地，面对着一种命运为他人掌握的未知数。这使我们想到东北画家李大方的某些作品，有一种不祥的事件即将发生的现场感呈现在面前。李昌龙以“这不是我们的山头”和“这不是我的风景”为题，表现出某种发展中国家常见的混乱与无序，正义与制度的缺失所带来的日常生活的不可靠和不可预知。在这里，“风景”的概念成为理解他的作品的切入点。
英文中的“风景”（Landscape）一词产生于17世纪，来自于荷兰文中的Landschap一词，意指一片被开垦过的土地。这是因为荷兰（尼德兰）地处低地，为了免于海水淹没，荷兰人不断地筑堤护地，Land就是土地，在早期西班牙殖民地时期，荷兰的七个省份中，有4个省份的名字中带有Land一词。这个词源的考证说明风景从来就不是纯粹自然的景观，这是人对自然开发的结果，是具有人文历史意义的表现。从这个意义来说，李昌龙画中的人物，从来就不是孤立在处在一片空白的空间之中，而是处在一个具有特殊意味的场景之中，这个场景具有某种超现实主义的梦幻特色。李昌龙绘画中的风景，是艺术家对于当代人文状态的再现，一种具有强烈主观表现性的“再现”，与传统绘画中的再现性风景不同，李昌龙不是为了表达某种视觉审美意义上的形式语言的风景，而是将风景作为一种现代性的呈现媒介，将风景作为 一种具有意识形态意义上的符号加以呈现和解释。
风景中的“观看”的方式，是今天的视觉文化研究所关注的重点。即是什么决定了我们的观看，我们是如何观看的，我们想观看什么，我们观看的欲望是如何制约并表达了我们的观看方式。通常，我们将艺术家的观看与表达，视为一种与大众不同的具有艺术真实性的观看，我们相信他们的观看与表达，并且自觉不自觉地接受他们的观看方式与表达。在这样的情况下，艺术家为我们提供什么样的观看图像，这些图像将会怎样影响我们对现实的观看？“景观”也是李昌龙所使用的一种构思表达语言。在现代城市规划与建设中，大量的是人造的风景，为了区分传统的自然的风景，我们将这种大规模、大区域的人造风景称之为“景观”，并且在现代建筑与园林学院中设立了景观规划专业，这反映出现代城市的发展野心，即人类试图改变自然，强制自然，按自我心中的想象规划未来的人造风景。李昌龙的绘画，对这种人造的景观是一种尖锐的质疑，并且从现代人与城市的关系来批判性地反省人与自然的心理联系。
陶东风教授认为：“艺术中的风景是人和世界分离之后或对象化之后的产物，也是艺术和世界分离之后的产物，所以风景是呈现出来的或是建构出来的，不是自在的。”这种风景的呈现方式很重要，如何呈现，呈现什么，为什么要这样呈现，都是至关重要的。李昌龙在风景中呈现了现代社会的速度以及与速度相联系的焦虑；其次他在风景中呈现了心灵的骚动和感觉的分裂；最后，他在画面中呈现了与现代科学和政治所要求的理性与秩序不同的无序和底层人的快意逆反。在他的风景中，表现了一种原始的荒凉与现代城市的尖锐冲突，这里不是对现代化的诗意与温情的歌颂，而是一种对现代化的焦虑，可以将他的作品与翁奋创作于2001年的那幅著名的摄影作品作一比较，在翁奋的作品中，一位少女骑坐的一堵老墙上，背对观众，翘望远方崛起高楼与城市（以深圳为景观对象），其中有个体的迷茫，但对于城市的崛起却只有一种无力的观望，是对全球消费主义意识形态下第三世界拼命建设摩天大楼的风景方式的温和批判。而在李昌龙的作品中，城市被推向更为远处的天际线，像海市蜃楼一样遥不可及，倒是近处的风景保留着原始的荒凉与混乱，清晰的笔触表示这是可以触摸的现实，这是李昌龙对于城市现代性的强烈质疑与反讽。
李昌龙作品中的人物没有清晰而坚实的脚下根基，他们处于一种“沦陷”的状态，但在“沦陷”中不甘堕落，力求让自己在空中升腾，超越现实。正如文学评论家肖鹰所说，在今天的技术与欲望的交织当中，我们实际上丧失了一种原始、简单的生活状态，即“在大地上的生活”，这是沉重而有质感的生活。李昌龙通过青年一代对城市的远距离瞭望揭示了人与大地的关系，他在画布上创造了某种人与大地关系的视觉隐喻，以杂乱如麻的笔触，表现了这个世界的疯狂、贪婪与荒诞。从李昌龙的作品中，我看到他对于时间与空间关系的颠覆与重新缝合，现代人的生活状态，在被闪光灯照亮的瞬间永远地定格于画布之上，李昌龙将历史与现实搅拌之后转化为一种超现实的心理景观。
与艺术家这种尖锐的批判和毫不妥协的现实态度相比，我觉得李昌龙的绘画语言倒显得比较温和，特别是人物的塑造，更接近于传统写实绘画的体积性表达。虽然在人物的轮廓方面吸收了近年来比较多见的李希特式的模糊，但他可以在更为强烈的表现性笔触方面组织并强化线条的力量。其实在李昌龙这一代画家中，他已经是对于画面处理技术相当敏感的画家，对语言细节处理的快感是传统绘画最易被人忽视的一部份。诚然，面对今日到处流行的流行艺术的平涂图像，李昌龙已经是很出色的画家了，我只是提醒他注意当代油画在写意性与表现性方面的进展，强化自己的绘画语言特征，从而在技术美学的角度上进一步提升绘画的艺术价值。当代艺术的发展虽然在通俗化和大众性方面取得了令人瞩目的进展，但是并没有取消绘画的经典性，这种经典性仍然取决于艺术家对画面结构与语言处理的技术继承与创新，这也是我观看了中国美术馆展出的“泰特美术馆藏透纳绘画珍品展”后的深切体会。
殷双喜
2009年6月16日
Senery of the Mind
An interpretation of Li Changlong’s paintings
Yin Shuangxi
A violent shower at midday has darkened the sky. In the rhythm of the trickling rain is the thunder’s distant roaring. The city, covered in mist, is illuminated by the lightening in a flash and again immersed in mistier rain.
What the above words describe is a concrete and perceivable cityscape. However, in this depressing noon of early summer, I was exposed to Li Changlong’s paintings and entered into another spiritual landscape, which is wonderful landscape because it embeds people in the real world. It seems to be about the city, but it’s in fact more focused on people’s heart that is undergoing dramatic changes along with the ever-changing modern cities.
As for Li Changlong’s paintings, they have generated many interesting and profound views from quite a few critics. Combining these views, his paintings are basically described as follows: “there are two elements co-existing in his paintings: various scenes of deep space and true-to-life figures. These scenes come from different kinds of pictures: natural scenery, industrial wasteland, rubbles of war, disaster and accident sites, artificial gardens, cities under construction or disappearing in devastation. The figures in his paintings are mostly himself or his variants.”
Critics defines Li Changlong’s paintings as “focusing on technique, valuing the inspiration brought about by personal privacy, preserving the specific elements already appreciated and accepted by viewers and meanwhile, adding in his own personality and personal conclusion of the philosophy of technique.” They consider him to be the watcher who keeps the dignity of painting in the post-modern age when there are strong conceptions. These comments have given me great inspiration when I interpret Li Changlong’s arts.
But what has attracted more of my attention is his own original description about painting: “recently, I prefer to stiffly paste the people looked up to by others (maybe because of my height expectation) to the imaginary cityscape, natural scenery or spiritual landscape, dealing with a relationship of flashing and being flashed and fabricating the distance between humanity and landscape.”
In the sudden illumination of flashlight, the figures in Li Changlong’s paintings seem as if they were the fixed images in the lightening, deeply impressing us with strong visual effect. As a man who has been through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, the intense light that glows from the bottom of the stage and lights up the face of the villains in the revolutionary model drama is still lingering in my memory. That’s not the radiance of hero, for the radiance of hero is the red glare that is shining down obliquely from above. In Li Changlong’s sketches, he marks, over and over again, the distant “beautiful scenery”, which is an unattainable ideal within sight. The horizon in traditional painting carries special meaning in his works. The obscure distant view and the tangled short view are woven into a sharp conflict. Although the figures are in the space, they seem to be sticked on the space like paper-cuts due to the huge shadow caused by flashlight, making the figures and landscape in his painting seem to be stiffly embedded. These figures are floating and glistening in the landscape, becoming the exact expression of the restless soul of modern people.
Let’s take a look at his works. Looking Down at You I, which portrays three youngsters from underdeveloped regions overlooking somewhere outside the painting, just like the Four Heavenly Kings with wide-open glaring eyes in China’s traditional temples, has psychologically expressed this generation of youngsters’ viewing angle and attitude toward certain reality. In Looking Down at You III, the central figure lights up a man and a woman in the water with a torch, indicating that on the edge of the city, secret life is peeped by a huge unforeseeable power from height. The beam of the torch represents omnipresent monitoring, which is similar to Visitors in the Deep Night, an early work of Deng Jianjin. This is the modern city’s fable about freedom and control, privacy and discipline. In Li Changlong’ paintings, the central figures are often looked up to, just like when we admire the heavenly king and Buddha’s warrior attendants in Chinese temples. Life is expressed by portraying the central figures overlooking the world. The look-up and look-down demonstrates the huge gap between the artist’s observation and experience of life. The huge gap of space and time, accompanied by the rapid development of cities, constitutes the haunting illusion of modern people. In this way, Li Changlong has given a new meaning to space in contemporary paintings.
In 2006 No.1, young people get together to piss on something collectively and their hair is like burning fire. Much similar to Liu Xiaodong’s Burning Rat, the painting expresses some sort of silent rage and joyous outlet. In 2006 No.3, the portrait of the painter, as the main part of the painting, becomes a towering peak, standing by the nameless sea and squinting at the distance. In these paintings, the figures, placing themselves in an ambiguous environment, are floating above the city and the skyscrapers. Supported by a suspicious cloud, A Group of Contemporary Art Lovers Stripped Naked in the Dusk is ascending in the landscape. They stay together and deprived of everything, reminding me of Duchamps’s The Bride Stripped Naked by Bachelors
In Stowaway, which represents the painters’ psychological analysis of his own, the central figure helplessly reaches out hands in the sea and attempts to push away all kinds of cameras and microphones, symbolizing modern media’s group attack against individual privacy, while the flashlights are lighting up the panic and unease of the individuals. As the unsuccessful survivors on the edges of society, these stowaways are trying to leave the shore, but the other shore in the distance only unfolds for them a future hard to see through. In This Is Not My Landscape, a group of young people is standing near the highway, gazing at the blue water beside them. Far away is the city covered in heavy fumes of black smoke, and nearby is the water with giant and weird plants growing in it, forming inharmonious desolation with the arch bridge in a traditional garden. Li Changlong’s paintings are full of this kind of ominous and absurd metaphors. In the series of Developing Country, the figures are looking downward from high mountains. With distant city lights looming in the dusk, the central figure, with telescope and camera in his hands, is bending over to observe the landscape below him, but the vast and stark world blurs his eyes. The unknowable far-away place and the horizon is the key to interpreting Li Changlong’s paintings in which the figures become obscure from below the knee and they don’t know what they are based on. The suspicious mountains they are standing on may be the dark clouds floating in the air that is likely to dissolve and disperse at any moment. Here, what Li Changlong is trying to express is the panic before disaster strikes and the desire of urban youths in face of unknown destiny to hold on to each other.
In Li Changlong’s latest works (e.g. the works in art exhibition themed “The Strength of the Southwest” held in Chengdu in 2008), he has described a scene similar to gangdom. In that panting, a young man who is wrestled to the ground, with his destiny in the control of others, is facing the horrible unknown. This reminds me of Li Dafang, a painter from the northeast, whose paintings give the viewers a overwhelming sense of being on the spot of upcoming misfortune. With the title of “This is Not Our Mountain Top” and “This Is Not My Landscape”, Li Changlong expresses the chaos and disorder commonly seen in some developing countries and the uncertainty and unpredictability in daily life due to absence of justice and regulation. Here, the concept of “landscape” becomes a good point to start interpreting his works.
In English, “landscape” appeared in English language in the 17th century. Its origin is “landschap”, a Dutch word, referring to a stretch of ploughed land. Holland (the Netherlands) is located in lowland and in order to prevent the raging seawater, the Dutch ceaselessly put up dykes. In the early Spanish colonial period, the word “land”, which is a part of “landschap” has appeared in the names of four provinces of the Holland’s seven provinces. The etymologic research of the origin of this word has proved landscape has never been the pure natural scenery, but is the result of humans’ exploitation of nature as well as the demonstration of humanistic and historic significance. In this sense, the figures in Li Changlong’s paintings have never being placed in a blank space. On the contrary, they are in a scene of special significance characterized by some sort of surrealistic and fantastic colors. The scenery in Li Changlong’s painting is the painter’s representation of contemporary humanistic state, a “representation” with strong subjective expressivity, which is different from the representative scenery in traditional paintings. Rather than expressing the scenery as the formal language in the sense of visual aesthetics, Li Chnglong regards scenery as a modern medium for expression, then presents and interprets scenery as a symbol of ideological meaning.
The ways of “viewing” landscape is the focus of today’s visual culture research, namely, what has decided our “viewing”, in what way do we watch, how does our desire for viewing has restricted and expressed our ways of viewing. Usually, we regard artists’ viewing and expressing as a kind of viewing of artistic authenticity, which is different from the masses. We believe in their viewing and expressing and consciously or unconsciously accept their ways of viewing and expressing. Under such circumstance, what kind of visual images will artists provide to us and how will these images shape our perception of the reality? “Scenery” is also a language Li Changlong employs to express his conception. In the urban planning and construction of modern times, there is lots of artificial sceneries. In order to distinguish it from the natural scenery in the traditional sense, we call this kind of artificial landscape of large scale and vast area “scenery”, and we have established landscape planning as a major in modern architecture and landscape institute, reflecting modern cities’ ambition of development, namely, humans’ ambition to change and control the nature so as to plan the future man-made scenery according to their own imagination. Li Changlong’s painting has pointedly questioned this kind of artificial landscape and critically reflected upon the association between human and nature from the relationship between modern people and the city.
Professor Tao Dongfeng believes : “landscape in art is the product of the separation of human and the world or the result of objectification and also the product of the separation of art and the world, so, landscape is presented or constructed rather than arises spontaneously.” The way the landscape is presented is very important, especially how to present, what to present and why it should be presented in such a way. In his landscape, Li Changlong firstly presents the speed of modern city as well as the anxiety associated with it; secondly, he presents the disturbance in the heart and the disintegration of feeling; lastly, he presents the disorder and delightful rebellion incompatible with the rationality and orderliness required by modern science and politics. In his landscape, there is a sharp conflict between the original desolation and the modern city. Here, what’s expressed is not the poetic and tender celebration of modernization, but the anxiety it causes. We can compare his painting to the famous photographic work of Weng Fen in 2001, in which a maiden, riding on an old wall with her back against the viewers, is looking far into the rising of skyscrapers and city in the distance (take Shenzhen city as the landscape). The portraying of the confusion of individuals who are helplessly looking at the rising of cities is the mild criticism of the Third World’s desperate construction of a landscape teeming with skyscrapers under the global ideology of consumerism. However, in Li Chnglong’s painting, the city is pushed to a further skyline and becomes the mirage that is out of reach, but the nearby scenery still keeps the original desolation and chaos. The clear strokes indicate this is touchable reality, through which Li Changlong strongly questions and poignantly satirizes the modernity of the city.
The figures in Li Changlong’s painting have no clear and substantial foundation. They are in a state of “falling apart”, but are not willing to degenerate when “falling apart”, so they strive to rise up through the air and transcend the reality. Just as Xiao Ying, a literature critic has put it, “in the interweaving of today’s technology and desire, we have in fact lost the original and simple life, namely, ‘living down to earth’, a kind of life with weight and quality.” Li Changlong has revealed the relationship between human and the earth through younger generation’s remote viewing of the city, created some sort of visual metaphor of the relationship between human and the earth and depicted this crazy, greedy and ridiculous world with tangled touches. In Li Changlong’s painting, we can see his subversion and recombination of the time-space relationship. In the moment of the illumination of the flashlight, modern people’s life is permanently fixed on the canvas and the history and reality mixed up by Li Changlong is transformed into a surrealistic view of the mind.
Compared with artists’ pointed critique and uncompromising attitude, in my opinion, Li Changlong’s painting language is somewhat milder, especially the portrait of characters is closer to three-dimensional expression in tradtional realistic painting. Although the figures’ profiles have absorbed vagueness of Richter’s style that is commonly seen in recent years, he manages to muster and strengthen the power of lines with strokes of stronger expressiveness. As a matter of fact, among painters of his generation, he is very sensitive toward picture processing techniques, because the speed of dealing with painting language details is the part most likely to be ignored in traditional painting. Obviously, considering the prevailing flat color images of pop arts appearing everywhere, Li Changlong is a very brilliant painter. I just want to remind him to pay attention to the progress of contemporary oil painting in suppositionality and expressivity and strengthen the characteristics of his painting language, so as to further promote the artistic value of his painting. Although the development of contemporary arts has made remarkable progress in popularity, painting still has classical nature, which depends on the artists’ inheritance and innovation of the techniques of processing painting composition and language. This is also my deep understanding after visiting “Exhibition of Turner’s art treasures collected by Tate Modern Art Gallery” at National Art Museum of China.
June 16th, 2009
