田伟：立足当代的文化道路
范迪安 中国美术馆馆长
进入21世纪的中国艺术正在获得前所未有的与世界密切交往的机遇，中国艺术与国际艺术在各种平台上的会面，促进了不同文化间的相互认识与理解，而这 种交往的核心价值，更在于展开当下的对话，探讨在全球化条件下如何获得充分的艺术创造性，从而构建属于这个时代的艺术文化。在这种对话的阵势中，我们既需 要观察生活在中国本土的艺术家如何基于今日中国社会文化情景的深度体验，提出和解决艺术的当代课题，同时也要将目光放在生活在海外的中国艺术家那里，看他 们如何在身处异质文化的生活境遇中迎对文化的挑战，在艺术上作出自己的判断、选择与建树。正是在这个意义上，从太平洋彼岸的美国回到中国的田伟，向我们展 示了一个有份量的案例。
对于国内画坛来说，田伟是一位让人陌生的艺术家。他自1980年代中期赴美国学习后，就几乎没有在中国本土的艺术活动中露面，因此，当他的作品以个人展览 的方式呈现在我们面前时—其中既有在海外二十年间不同时期的手笔，也更有近些年主题集中的新作—提供的是一份崭新的视觉创造经验，其中的重要价值在于体现 了一位中国艺术家穿越文化边界的探险，也展示了他勇敢地从当代文化层面所进行的文化融合实践。
旅美二十多年的生涯，为田伟提供了极为广泛的视野，特别是他在美国接受的艺术教育，使他的艺术基础和文化认识首先拥有了西方现代艺术的基因。在美国艺术学 府自由的教学环境中，他的艺术感受方式无疑是西方式的。从20世纪初的欧洲抽象绘画到最能代表美国文化精神的抽象表现主义，成为了他基本的艺术观念和风格 来源，因此，追求绘画中视觉的新颖程度、形式结构的强度、特别是创作过程中随性抒发的表现力度，构成了他艺术的基调。在某种程度上，他的个性与具有扩张欲 望的艺术理想形成了天然的默契，这在他的作品中表现为一种强烈的视觉张力。虽然他的绘画形态和技法、风格在过去的二十年间有着阶段性的变化，但这种特质基 本上一直贯穿下来，成为支撑作品、也支撑着他不断探索的内在力量。
但是，有两个方面的因素促使田伟的艺术不是延续着属于西方现代主义时期的抽象绘画这条道路往前走，而是形成了他个人艺术新的方向。首先，他在美国经历的西 方“后现代”艺术演变使得他看到了绘画艺术作为一种文化对话方式的可能性。原先处于封闭系统中的绘画不再静态地张扬自身，而是在与社会文化的互动中以观念 的诉说参与新文化形态的生成，对话成为艺术创造的动机。田伟正是把握住了绘画作为当代艺术的这种特性，也可以说他把握到了西方文化变迁的这个契机，从而在 自己的实践中将原先纯粹的“表现性”转为“描述性”，试图通过抽象形式这个载体，表达自己对文化的看法与态度。另一方面，他在美国生活的时间越长，他愈发 怀想中国传统文化的价值，其中特别思考和借鉴了中国书法这种融抽象性和表现性为一体的艺术语言，从而旨在探索中西艺术在当代层面上的融合。概括地说，田伟 这些年致力的是一种“双重转换”，在艺术抽象性的基础层面之上，把西方现代抽象绘画纯粹的“表现性”语言转换为具有“描述性”功能的语言，同时，也把中国 书法中书写的“表现性”手法转换为能够产生“描述性”内容的形式。通过这种即是观念层面也是语言层面的转换，他好比获得了一把浸染了中西两种文化基因的双 刃剑，可以直逼当下文化情境，尽情施展自己的创造才华。
或许可以把田伟的绘画称之为一种“中国式的后现代绘画”。他的作品往往分为表层符号和底层肌理。在表层符号上，他将各种从日常生活感受中得来的英语单词用 中国书法的形式书写出来。这些符号与具有大众文化性质的生活经验有关，充满生活的趣味和幽默，它们是可辨视和可理解的，但是，它们在强烈的书写形式下，又 是类似于抽象线条的，这成为他绘画风格的主要特征。在这里，田伟要解决的问题是如何将传统中国书法的书写方式改变为现代的书写方式。传统中国书法对书写的 评价标准有“入纸三分”、“如屋漏痕”、“如锥划沙”等视觉美学的要求，但田伟使用的是画布而非中国纸，他就需要解决书写性线条的视觉力量问题。经过试 验，他使用厚重的颜料使平面的线鼓凸立体了起来，十分强烈的颜料物质性使书写过程中的提按、转折、力度等这些表现性因素得到体现，甚至留下许多偶发性的效 果，这就实现了书写内容和书写形式从传统向现代的转变。在底层肌理上，是田伟的对话对象，在那里，时而有西方艺术史的图像，时而有中国艺术或书法的图像。 通过表层和底层产生的视觉反差，上演出文化对话的活剧。
田伟自己深知，在这种营构式的创作中表达自己的感兴，是一种理性与感性相结合的方式。他希望自己的作品充满现代人的基本感受，特别是一种视觉上的强烈效 果，于是他使用了单纯而强烈的色调，甚至使用强度最大的荧光颜料。在这方面，他的实验走向了极端，也使得作品跳出了已有的视觉形态。
我之所以对田伟的艺术持有肯定的评价，是因为20世纪以来，中国艺术家在西方现代主义到后现代时期的艺术经验面前普遍感受到对文化矛盾冲撞的焦虑，如何在 中西两种文化的差异中走出自己的道路，是一个共同的课题。从田伟的艺术中，可以看到一位中国艺术家立足当代文化提供的契机，在文化矛盾和碰撞的前沿展开试 验和交锋，从而获得了两种文化基因交融而成的跨文化文本。
Tian Wei:
A Cultural Path of the Contemporary
Fan Di’an Director, National Art Museum of China
The 21st century has witnessed unprecedented extensive exchanges between Chinese art and the international art world at all levels and the promoted mutual understanding among different cultures, which help to explore creativity in art and the construction of an art and culture of this age. It is in this context that we not only need to examine how local Chinese artists solve contemporary art issues based on experiences of Chinese socio – cultural context, but also cast our sight to overseas Chinese artists and see how they confront cultural challenges in an alien culture and make their judgment, choice and achievement. It is in this sense that Tian Wei, who returns to China from the US, is unfolding an important case study.
Moving to the United States in the mid 1980’s and almost unseen ever since in local art events in China, Tian Wei is unfamiliar to the Chinese art world. Therefore, when his works are presented before us in his solo exhibition – with both productions from his twenty–year overseas life and recent works of certain themes – they offer a new visual experience that reveals not only the crossing culture explorations of a Chinese artist, but also his bold experiments in melting different cultures.
Twenty years in the US have provided Tian Wei with an eclectic vision, and the art education he had there has given him the gene of western modern art, hence his undoubtedly western sensitivity of art. Western modern art, from the early – 20th century European abstract painting to the American Abstract Expressionism, is the origin of his artistic ideas and style, leading to an art that pursues visual novelty, strength of formal structure and spontaneous expression in painting. To a certain extent, his personality is a natural match to his artistic ambition that desires expansion, presented as a strong visual tension in his work. Despite the periodic changes in the form, technique and style of his painting, this trait remains unchanged as the inner power to support his work and his incessant exploration.
However, two elements propel Tian Wei’s art towards a new direction instead of following the path of western modernist abstraction. The first element is western “postmodern” art, which showed him the possibilities of painting as a way of cultural dialog. Painting, which used to stay in an enclosed system, stopped to statically brag itself and started to participate in shaping a new cultural pattern through interactions with society and culture, by way of conceptual utterance – dialog becomes the motivation for art creation. Tian Wei captured such a character of painting in contemporary art, or in another word, such an opportunity in the transition of western culture, and transformed the pure Expressivity in his painting practice into a Descriptivity, in an effort to express his vision and attitude towards culture through the medium of abstraction. On the other hand, the longer he stayed in the US, the more he is inclined to Chinese traditional culture. He drew upon Chinese calligraphy, a language that integrates both abstraction and expressivity, attempting to probe the melting of western and Chinese art in the contemporary context. In short, Tian is committed, over the years, to a “dual transformation”, i.e., transforming at the basic level of abstraction the purely “expressive” language in western abstract painting into a language with “descriptive” functions, while in the same time transforming the “expressive” technique in Chinese writing into a form capable of rendering “descriptive” content. Through the latter, which is a transformation at the conceptual and lingual level, he seems to have got a double – edged sword quenched with both Chinese and western cultural genes, which enables him to deal directly with the current cultural scene with his best creative talent.
Perhaps, Tian Wei’s painting may best be called a “Chinese postmodern painting”, which comprises surface symbols and substrate textures. In terms of surface symbols, he writes out with Chinese calligraphy the English words that he acquires in everyday life, symbols associated with the popular culture. Eligible and understandable, they are full of the delight and humor of life, but in the meantime, the strong writing form has turned them into lines of abstraction, which is a noticeable feature of his style. Here, the issue for Tian Wei to tackle is to convert the ways of writing in traditional Chinese calligraphy, with its own distinctive aesthetic criteria, into modern ways of writing. Working on canvas instead of on Chinese paper, Tian Wei must find ways to heighten the visual strength of the writing lines, which he achieves through the use of heavy pigment, which allows the flat lines to protrude and be dimensional. The very strong pigment not only enables the presentation of the expressive elements in the writing process, such as the movement and force of the strokes, it also produces accidental effects on the canvas, whereby he achieves the transition from tradition to modernity in both the content and form of writing. The substrate texture, on the other hand, is the object he dialogs with, which incorporates both icons in western art history at some time and references of Chinese art or calligraphy at other times. Thus, the visual contrast between the surface and the substrate plays a live drama of cultural dialog.
Tian Wei knows that such a way of expressing his feeling in a constructive production is the result of the combination of both sense and sensibility. He wants his work to be filled with the emotional experiences of the modern man, and to have a strong visual effect, to which end he uses pure and strong colors, including the strongest fluorescent pigments. His experiment in this respect has gone to the extreme, but also frees his work from existing visual norms.
Confronted with western modernism and postmodernism, Chinese artists since the 20th century feel a common anxiety over the impacting of different cultures, hence a common issue facing them has been to find a way of their own out of the differences between the Chinese and western cultures. Tian Wei’s art demonstrates the experiments and engagement of a Chinese artist at the frontline of conflicting and impacting cultures, who manages to produce a crossing culture text that blends genes from both cultures. It is in this respect that I am positive of Tian Wei’s art.
