青年畫家李曉奇的作品具有很強(qiáng)的白日夢特征，我們在其中可以看到某種強(qiáng)烈的視覺圖像的生成意志，這些看似隨意的畫布上的夢想的形跡，體現(xiàn)了一種青春期的朦朧的理想主義敘事。雖然李曉奇使用的是油畫這一繪畫媒介，但作品卻具有濃重的水墨意味，我指的不是他的作品中普遍存在的黑白意象，而是作品中自然流露的寫意精神，看似很輕松的書寫，卻具有很強(qiáng)的線性因素，從而將某種沉重的東西很輕松地表達(dá)出來，這是一種舉重若輕的能力，是優(yōu)秀的藝術(shù)家在成長中所獨(dú)有的藝術(shù)氣質(zhì)。在李曉奇的作品中有一種苦澀的黑色幽默，它也許是無法排遣的青春期孤獨(dú)，也許是超越青春期的渴望，我倒寧愿這是一種80后的青年藝術(shù)家與我們所進(jìn)行的一個跨越年代的討論。在這樣一個主題不明，時間未定，場所曖昧的文化對話中，李曉奇與我們進(jìn)行的交流，可以視為一種畫布上的討論，我們與他在畫布上不期而遇，討論經(jīng)由青春期的懷舊而能達(dá)到的精神之家，也就是一種青春的期冀在何處可以依附，如何讓我們這一代人在內(nèi)心深處找到心靈的歸宿。
在李曉奇的作品中，人物的形象是模糊的，身體的生理特征是不明顯的，這反映了一種夢中的難以確定的形象。當(dāng)然，在《抱住你了》等作品中，身穿晚禮服的紳士，與女性在沙龍中約會，既可以理解成是青春期的慣?；孟肱c浪漫想象，也可以是一種現(xiàn)實(shí)社會的價值折射。
李曉奇的作品大體上有幾類。一類以《傳說》這樣的作品為代表，人在書中，書在水上，水中有棵枯樹，以一種夢幻的超現(xiàn)實(shí)主義的遐想，將神話與傳說、歷史與英雄結(jié)合起來?！逗谏帧芬划?，看似古代戰(zhàn)場的遺址，雜亂的白色之手，與死亡者、擺渡的船，稻草人，爆炸的火光，并置一起，如同畢加索《格爾尼卡》式的全景夢魘。《王和他丟失的應(yīng)許》、《王和流血的蝙蝠》，畫幅都很大，具有歷史畫的宏大意圖，但畫法卻極為隨意，意義比較晦澀，孤島、飛翔的人、滑翔機(jī)和水中受傷的人，構(gòu)成令人不安的破碎場景。而《獵物》一畫中，野牛與紳士，互為獵物，同樣受傷，與前述大畫一樣，都具有某種潛在的令人不安的暴力與傷害的意象，這是否反映了青年一代較為脆弱的易受傷害的不安情緒?
另一類作品則反映了現(xiàn)代社會中個人的孤獨(dú)與人際交流的困境。如《袋中的魚》以碩大的魚眼反映對于自身處境的若有所思。個體《獨(dú)居》于密室，這種身體與精神的囚禁來自外力還是自我的封閉?《獨(dú)行》中無法言說的孤獨(dú)，《斷尾的壁虎》中那顆受傷的心，《飛不起》中那只羽毛蓬松的大鳥，腳拴紅繩，無法起飛。同樣，《試飛》一畫，風(fēng)箏與人，互相被線所拴，與《覓》中舉燈疾行的夜行人一樣，都是某種生存境遇的暗喻。
還有一類作品則反映了畫家對于人類歷史的文化記憶，可以理解為對于傳統(tǒng)文化故園的懷戀。如《柜子》一畫，老式的柜子，壓著一個人，空中飛翔的人想鉆進(jìn)去卻不得要領(lǐng)，荒野孤樹，無盡悲涼?！蹲呶麝P(guān)》也是一種游園，故園神游，有小橋?qū)毸绞魉?，但都是虛擬的線條，如同一種影像的解構(gòu)，在看似流暢的寫意與平靜敘述中，自有一種夜行者的驚心動魄。
以下我試圖解析李曉奇作品中的若干視覺文化含義。首先，李曉奇的作品具有非常零碎的圖像拼組特征，這種由碎片所構(gòu)成的景觀社會暗示出現(xiàn)代生活的瞬時性與無序性，碎片化使我們的生活變成了“流動的”、“偶然的”和“隨意的”，它造就了現(xiàn)代人的多重身份和不斷變換的生活角色。碎片化暗示出對世界意義的闡釋的增殖化，這一過程也是一種去中心化和去集權(quán)化的過程，它意味著個體經(jīng)驗(yàn)、地方歷史和邊緣文化重新回到人類精神價值體系中的可能性。
其次，李曉奇的作品使我有些意外地看到了青年一代畫家同樣具有某種對于人類精神家園的懷舊感，一如著名詩人荷爾德林所說：“請賜我們以雙翼，讓我們滿懷馳騁，返回故園。”
古典意義上的“家園”象征著與自然和神的詩意接觸，現(xiàn)代社會的“家”卻是以大都市為代表，它隨著城市的擴(kuò)張而演變成為一個“流動的帳篷”，這是失去了家園的人類所擁有的臨時居所，它可以成為一種身份證編號，一種電子編碼，它在統(tǒng)一性的外觀下將人們對于歷史與文化的“記憶”置于現(xiàn)實(shí)生活的忙碌之外，使之成為匿名的記憶與存檔。后現(xiàn)代主義思想家利奧塔認(rèn)為，從家園向大都會的轉(zhuǎn)變，意味著人類的生活從詩意化的田園場景蛻變?yōu)槔硇曰募夹g(shù)場景。
李曉奇的作品也使我們意識到我們需要重建有意義的日常生活。在現(xiàn)代技術(shù)的世界里，經(jīng)濟(jì)生活迅速改變了人們的生活節(jié)奏與生活的目標(biāo)，實(shí)用的動機(jī)與迫在眉睫的生存問題使我們不再思考生存的價值與生命的意義。人類失去個人的本真，走向命運(yùn)的異化，首先是人與世界的物化，其次是人與世界的分離，再者是世界的均一化，生活的單調(diào)與乏味。作為一種實(shí)在，日常生活是最終的和最高的。但是作為一個意義的領(lǐng)域，日常生活的世界是有限的，與它相對應(yīng)的，還有夢的世界、游戲的世界、神話的世界、科學(xué)的世界以及藝術(shù)的世界等。例如，日常生活中的時間是一種線性綿延的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)時間，而在夢中的時間則是一種支離破碎的斷片的時間。日常生活以實(shí)用為動機(jī)，而游戲與藝術(shù)的世界則是非功利的、非實(shí)用的世界。
李曉奇再一次以藝術(shù)的方式，引誘我們進(jìn)入夢想之境。只有在游戲與幻想的世界中，我們才能擺脫日常生活的支配，超越時間與空間的束縛，獲得某種思想的自由，在這種自由的幻想之中，獲得日常生活中所難以達(dá)到的思想的快感。
由此，李曉奇在無意之間建立了當(dāng)代與歷史、個體與文化的精神聯(lián)系。事實(shí)上，歷史一直存在著，但是因?yàn)楹臀覀儧]有發(fā)生聯(lián)系，歷史就不可能成為與我們有關(guān)，為我們而存在的歷史，因而也就是不屬于我們的歷史。我們創(chuàng)造了自己的過去，我們敏感到時間的流逝，同時又感到我們身上有某種東西是不受時間侵害的。我們生活的質(zhì)量與深度建立在我們與過去聯(lián)系的基礎(chǔ)之上，因?yàn)闅v史不是由于它自身而有了深度，歷史與文化使我們感動，是因?yàn)樗谀骋粫r刻與我們相遇，由于某種意外性和偶然性，它和我們發(fā)生了聯(lián)系。深度存在于我們對過去的使用之中，也就是存在于我們與歷史的相遇之際。對于那些優(yōu)秀的藝術(shù)家來說，“深度”是一種自我的能力，是一種不受外界偶然事件影響的內(nèi)心生活的能力。正如魯迅在《傷逝》中所探討的主題，人應(yīng)當(dāng)在虛空里找到生命的意義和生存的價值，繼而把虛空的人生延續(xù)下去乃至充實(shí)光大，使歷史不被現(xiàn)實(shí)所中斷。
李曉奇的藝術(shù)是否代表了1970年代以后出生的青年藝術(shù)家的普遍狀態(tài)，抑或這是他個性化的獨(dú)特生活與知識經(jīng)驗(yàn)的藝術(shù)表達(dá)?這個問題再一次將我們置于對當(dāng)代藝術(shù)的價值判斷的十字路口，對于當(dāng)代青年藝術(shù)家的具有濃厚大眾文化特征和個性化日常經(jīng)驗(yàn)的藝術(shù)表達(dá)，應(yīng)該如何認(rèn)識?對具有后現(xiàn)代主義特征的當(dāng)代流行藝術(shù)如何進(jìn)行文化判斷?
我曾經(jīng)在《大眾文化與微觀政治》一文中，討論了1970年以后出生的畫家與80年代新潮美術(shù)家的最大區(qū)別，那就是他們沒有那種胸懷祖國、放眼世界的英雄主義與救世理想，而是將個人的生活和大眾文化與影像圖像作為重要的藝術(shù)表達(dá)資源，在平凡的日常生活中用異樣的眼光觀察物象，從中獲得異樣的感受。當(dāng)然，這種感受沒有前輩畫家在作品中表現(xiàn)出的那種由堅(jiān)定的理想與價值教育所形成的不容置疑的確定性，我們在這一代青年畫家的作品中看到若干游離與恍惚，曖昧與自戀。在他們的作品中，也會流露出無言的茫然和對前景的困惑，但從整體上來說，他們在作品中對于閑暇與享受的表達(dá)更具有一種對世俗生活的體驗(yàn)、認(rèn)同與投入。而他們在藝術(shù)表達(dá)方式上已經(jīng)由于當(dāng)代藝術(shù)信息的豐富來源和材料媒材的多樣化，具有了更大的自由度與綜合性。這不僅是一種藝術(shù)創(chuàng)作上的差異，也反映了新一代藝術(shù)家與前輩藝術(shù)家的文化價值觀的重要差異。問題在于這種文化與價值觀上的代際差異是否就是當(dāng)代社會諸多事物的自然秩序的一部分，它是不是我們這個時代新出現(xiàn)的和我們這個時代所特有的?討論這一問題必須考察這樣一種關(guān)系：特殊個體經(jīng)歷的審美經(jīng)驗(yàn)與社會歷史背景之間的關(guān)系。
意大利藝術(shù)評論家奧利瓦在《超級藝術(shù)》一書中提出了“熱超前衛(wèi)”(Hot Trans avanguardia)和“冷超前衛(wèi)”(cold Trans avanguardia)的概念。他所提出的這兩個概念不是平行的共時性概念，而是先后的歷時性概念，即“熱超前衛(wèi)”的一代人以使用語言的方式來利用強(qiáng)調(diào)藝術(shù)價值的機(jī)會，這種語言求助于歷史，以此作為其分離于日常用語的標(biāo)志。而當(dāng)前的一代人卻采用一種綜合的、或然性的方法，即對材料和語言選擇中的固有難題做出直接的反應(yīng)，哪怕這些材料和語言是根據(jù)同樣的疏離以及折衷的能力來加以使用，奧利瓦稱之為“矯飾主義者的模仿”。李曉奇的作品具有某些意大利超前衛(wèi)藝術(shù)的特征，即從歷史與文化傳統(tǒng)中吸取神話與英雄的氣質(zhì)，并且以看似隨意的涂鴉方式自由書寫。但是，從藝術(shù)的文化價值觀這一點(diǎn)上來分析，我認(rèn)為李曉奇的藝術(shù)仍然代表了一種現(xiàn)代主義的精神價值觀，即對于現(xiàn)代生活的異化狀態(tài)的分析，對人類的精神家園與文化歸宿的關(guān)注，但他不是采取主題性的宏大敘事，而是以具有夢幻性質(zhì)的意識流的方式來組合一種跨歷史的文化語境。從這一點(diǎn)上來說，李曉奇的藝術(shù)又具有某種后現(xiàn)代的“去中心主義”的價值取向與反統(tǒng)一性話語的自由主義性質(zhì)。
殷雙喜
2008年5月25日
Thrilled Feeling as a Result of Visiting Old Home
—— Li Xiaoqi’s Cultural Memory and Black Humor
by Yin Shuangxi
The works by the young artist, Li Xiaoqi has the strong features that only a day dreamer can do. In his paintings can be seen some strong will to generate images. A kind of narrative style with dim pubertal idealism presents itself by the way of seemingly arbitrary dreamy persons and expressions in the canvas. Despite of his choosing oil painting as a medium of painting, Li Xiaoqi has the works with a strong flavor of Chinese brush drawing, by which I do not mean the ubiquitous black and white images in his works but the impressionistic spirit, which is naturally revealed in the works. His painting seems to be easy writing while at the same time it has vigorous linear elements, by which a certain kind of heavy thing is expressed in a light-hearted manner. This an ability to take heavy things in a light way, which is the art temperament owned exclusively by a first-rate artist when he or she is still growing. In the works by Li Xiaoqi, there exists a kind of bitter black humor, which may be the pubertal loneliness that can not find its outlet, or may be the eager to overcome puberty, and which I personally prefer to be a kind of across-generation discussion going on between the young artists born in 1980s and us. Li Xiaoqi communicates with us in a culture dialogue with indefinite subject matters, uncertain time and ambiguous places. This form of communication can be considered as a kind of discussion going on a canvas, where he and we meet by chance and then begin to discuss how to get to the spiritual home through nostalgic puberty, i.e. where the pubertal hope can cling to and how to help our generation to find the psychological destination in the recess of our hearts
In the works by Li Xiaoqi, the images in dream which are hard to define are reflected via dim human figures and indistinct physical characteristics. Actually the gentlemen in evening dress and some females have date in salons in Li Xiaoqi’s works such as a hug on you and so on, which may be understood as the regular fantasy and romantic imagination in the pubertal period or may be taken as a kind of reflection as a result of the society value in the real world.
The works by Li Xiaoqi can be divided according to the following types. One of the types takes the painting named Legend as its representative, in which fairy tales are combined with legends and history with heroes with the aid of dreamy and surrealistic imagination of persons in water, books in water and a dead tree in water. The painting named Dark Forest, which takes the seemingly ancient battlefields as its background with white hands in a clutter, the dead, the ferrying boats, scarecrows, and exploding fire juxtaposed, have some common features with the panoramic view of nightmare in the painting named Guernica by Pablo Picasso. The painting named respectively The King and His Lost Promise and the King and the Bleeding Bat have large-scaled frames and have the grand meaning which alternately can be expressed by historical pictures. However, the two paintings were created with relaxed brush work and possess obscure meanings, in which the lonely island, the flying figure, glider and the wound in water constitute the discomforting fragmental scene. However, in the painting named Prey, the bison and the gentleman take each other as prey and are equally injured, which, like the grand-scaled paintings motioned above, has certain images of latent and discomforting violence and injury. Does not it reflect the disquiet and restlessness of the fragile young generation, which is susceptible to being hurt?
Another type of his paintings reflects the personal loneliness and the predicament of human communication in the present society. For instance, the Fish in the Bag reflect its seemingly thinking about its situation. To the individual Live Alone in the cell, does the physical and psychological confinement is caused by an external force or the result of self-close. The inexpressible loneliness in Walking Alone, the wounded heart in Wall Lizard with Amputated Tail, the big bird with fluffy features and red rope tied to the claw, which is unable to fly up in Unable to Fly, the kite and the man tangled with each other in the painting named Flight Test, and the scudding guy holding light at night are all metaphor of certain living situation.
There still another type of works reflecting the painter’s memory of human beings’ historic and culture, which can be understood as the missing and sentimental feelings towards the traditional cultural old home. To demonstrate, in the painting named Cupboard, an old-fashioned cupboard is pushed upon a man, which the persons flying in the sky are eager to get into but fail to do so for not having grasped the main point and there are lonely trees in the wilderness, which creates an atmosphere of endless desolation. To the West Gate is also another form of garden visiting, a form of visiting old home with wandering impulsion, in which there are little bridges, baotaqus, stone mountains and running water all of which, however, appear in virtual lines. In the seemingly smooth freehand brushwork and the peaceful narration, the watcher can naturally get a thrilled feeling that just a nightstalker can possess by way of image deconstruction.
In the following is the attempt to analyze and explain several visual cultural implications in the works by Li Xiaoqi. In the first place, one of the characteristics in in the works by Li Xiaoqi is the extremely fragmental image piecing. The social scene patched up by those fragments suggests the instantness and disorder of modern life. The fragments render our life “fluid”, “accidental” and “arbitrary”, which has brought up the multi-identifications and ever changing roles in life of modern people. The fragments suggest the reproduction of the explanations of the meanings of the world, the course of which is also that of elimination of centralization and implies the possibility of the returning of the individual experience, the local history and the boundary culture to the system of human spiritual value.
In the second place, the works by Li Xiaoqi approves that the young generation of artists also has certain nostalgic feeling towards human spiritual world, which is beyond my expectation. Just as one of the famous poets, Heidegger once said: “please let us endowed with wings so that we are able to return to our old home at full speed”. “The old home” in the classical sense symbolizes the poetical contact between nature and God, whereas in the modern world it refers to the urban city as its symbol, which is transformed into a mobile tent with the expansion of the city and works as the temporary residential place for the human beings, who have lost their homes. In this way, it may becomes a identification code, a electric code, which places the human’s “memory ”of history and culture outside the bustling in the real world with the uniform external appearance, becomes anonymous and then is filed. One of the postmodernist thinkers believes that the transformation from home to urban city means the human life undergoes the disintegration from the poetical pastoral scene into the sensible technical scene.
The works by Li Xiaoqi also make us aware of the need for us to reconstruct meaningful daily life. In the technical modern world, economic life had rapidly changed people’s living rhythm and target and the pragmatic motivation and the extremely urgent living matters leave us no longer thinking about the living value and the meaning of life. The human beings have lost the personal genuineness and headed towards their fortune alienation. The materialization of man and his world comes first, and then comes the disintegration of man and his world, and after that are the unification of the things in the world and the monotonous and tedious life. As a form of physical being, daily life is the ultimate and upmost thing. However, as a field of meaning, it is limited compared with the corresponding dreaming world, playing world, world of fairy tale, world of science and world of art. To be specific, time in daily life is linear and continuous standard time, while in contrast it is the disintegrated fragmental time in the dreaming world. Daily life takes practicality as its motivation, while in contrast the motivation in the world of game and art is non-practical and non-utilitarian.
Once more, Li Xiaoqi has tempted us into the world of dream in the artist way. Only in the world of game and fantasy can we get rid of the dominance by daily life and overcome the bonds of tome and space, and arrive at a certain kind of freedom of thinking and only in the imagination of freedom can be acquire the thought and sensual pleasure, which is hard to do in daily life.
In this way, Li Xiaoqi builds up the spiritual relation between the present and the past and between individual and culture involuntarily. As a matter of fact, history ever exists, but since it is not in connection with us, history is not the history which has something to do with us and exists with us, and is not the history that belongs to us. We have created our own past and can feel the flying of time, and at the same time we feel something on us is not susceptible to time. Our quality and depth of life is established on the basis of our relation to the past since history does not have the depth because of itself. History and culture can move us since at certain point of time; it meets us and initiates the relation with us out of some unexpectedness and accidentalness. The depth takes place when we make use of the past, i.e. when we and history meet. To those excellent artists, “depth” is the self-ability, the ability to do without the effect of the external accidents on the inner life. Just as the subject matter that Lu Xu has discussed in Death Mourning, people should seek out the meaning of life and the living value out of the imaginary space and in this way extend the life in the imaginary space even to its being full and grand and make history uninterrupted by the reality.
Does Li Xiaoqi represents the popular state of the young artists who were born in and after 1970s or the paintings are merely the artist expression of his special individual life and intellectual experience? This question for once put us at the crossing of judgment of contemporary art value. How should we approach the art expression with the characteristic of strong popular culture and individual daily experience? And in what manner should we judge the contemporary popular art with post modernistic features.
I once discussed in Popular Art and Micro Politics the major difference between the painters born in the 1970s and the fashionable artists born in the 1980s and concluded that the latter have not the heroism with the homeland in their mind and expanding their horizons to the whole world and the salvation ideal. They take personal life and popular culture and images as the major source of art expression and choose unusual point of view to observe things and images, thus acquiring a peculiar feeling. Without doubt, in this feeling there are not the same firm ideal and the undoubtful certainty which has been formed by valuable education as there are in the works by their predecessors. However, in the works by this young generation appear dissociation, trance, ambiguity and narcism. In their works are revealed unspeakable loss and bewilderness towards the future. But generally speaking, the experience of, the identification with and the engagement in the worldly life accompany their expression of being free and enjoyment in their works. Thanks to the rich sources of the contemporary art information and the variety of the materials and mediums, they have gained higher degree of freedom and comprehensiveness in the way of art expression. It is not only a kind of difference in the aspect of art creation but also a reflection of the major difference of culture values between the new generation of arts and that of their predecessors. The problem lies in whether the difference in the aspect of culture and value is one part of the natural order of the many things in the contemporary society and whether it first occurred in the new era and is specific to our era. To solve this problem, the following relationship must be taken into consideration: the relationship between the individual esthetic experience and its social and historical background.
The Italian art critic Oliwa once put forward in his book named Super Art the concepts of “Hot Trans avanguardia”and “cold Trans avanguardia”. These two concepts are not the concepts that are parallel with each other or did exist synchronically. On the contrary, they took place one after the other. The generation claiming “Hot Trans avanguardia” put emphasis on the chance of art value in the manner of langue, which resorts to history and works as the mark to differentiate from the daily used language. However, the contemporary people adopt a comprehensive method of probability, i.e. to respond directly to the inherent problem during the course of choosing material and language, even if they will be employed according to the same ability to disintegrate and compromise, which Oliwa called “the imitation by priggism holder”. The works by Li Xiaoqi has the features of the Italian art of Trans avanguardia, i.e. to absorb temperament of legend and hero from history and culture and do arbitrary brush work in the way of seemingly free doodle. But if analyzed from the point of art value, the works by li, I personally think, represents a modernistic spiritual value, i.e. the analyse of the alienating state of modern life and the attention to the human spiritual home and cultural destination. He does not adopt the grand narration with specific subject matter but composite a cross-history cultural langue context in manner of stream consciousness with dreamy quality. According to this point, Li Xiaoqi’s art has some post modernistic Value Orientation of "centre-removing" and liberalistic quality of anti-uniform of language.
25th May, 2008
【編輯：霍春?！?/span>
