多年前贺丹说要送给我些油画布与颜料，让我也把油画画起来，不知道他是真有此意还是说说玩笑。但作为版画家的我必须表明态度，当时就笑说自己不喜欢油画。事实上并不是我不喜欢油画，也并不是我只关心自己的专业画种，说起来是一时的情绪起了作用。那一年去欧洲考察，参观了太多的博物馆与美术馆，所见几乎都是古典油画，从此留在脑海里的油画印象全是繁琐细腻的感觉，看着让人非常受累。于是便有“我是学版画的”这样的说辞。现在想想也有一定道理，一方面证明我对古典油画技法的无解，另一方面经典的油画看多了也有自我的限定。

我喜欢看贺丹的画，因为我从来没有把他的作品当作是油画。指认贺丹的作品很容易，因为他的作品具有极高的辨识度。贺丹自上世纪九十年代就开始形成了稳定的图像模式，那些具有广阔视角的作品，就像是文化人类学方面的图表那般冷静，在他的作品中成为一种独特的式样循环复现。在他早期的画面中你可以看到“一些人”，在后期的作品中便发展演变为一个族群。再进一步深刻的去感受，就会体会到他在作品预设的层层意指。在他的作品中可以感受到对某一具体事物的关注，比如总是在画面中发生的事件，他们被赋予象征的意韵。你可以感受到一次邂逅成了诡谲的魅境，也可以发现众人正是这魅境的制造者，他们无有来头的被某些事件所吸引。有人拿贺丹的画与十六世纪荷兰画家彼得·勃鲁盖尔的作品相对照，可能是觉得他们之间有相通之处。但显然，贺丹并不是一位风俗型的画家，现实生活化的场景只是贺丹作品外在的表征，他的作品被人群充满，人群围绕于事件，以围观集合的人群建立起了一道无形的警戒线，使得原本具有明确叙事性结构的写实画面变得多义。他画面中那些聚集、堆叠的人群包裹住了意义发散的方向，指示出预设的目标，这正是贺丹式的绘画模式。他的作品一直在人群的集散关系之中纠缠众多的意指，甚至会出现成千上万的人群画面，他以这种密集的描绘营造出一种宏大的叙事场域，用人群构成统一的、指向性的记忆体，从而搅动起沉淀在我们意识或无意识深处的沉渣，这正是集体记忆与个体记忆合体的残留，贺丹借用生活情节的审美化去探测历史深处的踪迹。

绘画具有生活情节的原型，极易让人解读为风俗画，特别是中国北方的民俗生活场景，极具有浓厚的土地归属感。贺丹是陕北人，高原地貌与民俗生活是艺术家挥之不去的影子，现实生活本身曾经也是他这一代画家最关注的题材之一。事实上现实主义创作原则也是外来的产物，一定程度上是我们集体遵守的文艺创作方法。现实主义的文艺思想成为一种集体的创作模式，从而也会主导个体的文化观念。贺丹非常了解这一创作方法，在外在的形式上他的作品让我们觉得非常的熟悉，我们极易接受这种写实的观念，然而他的画面又会引导人们探究绘画背后的蕴意。那些突发的事件、那些观望与聚集，都使我们在记忆的深处搜寻答案，他的作品似乎是在遗忘中拯救我们的记忆，把我们也带入一种持续的观望状态，这种代入感正是因为裹上了写实性的生活化图景，才使作品产生更为强烈的表现力。通过对现实的再造，贺丹创造了异于生活的典型情节，构建起超越现实的宏阔空间，给观者提供了一种最佳的观察视角。

其实，贺丹在他的画面中设定了一种观看的角度，从这种角度他引导了我们看待人群的方向。他选择45度向下俯视的视角来组织画面，我把这个角度定义为可升降的视觉态度，使画面无法聚焦于一点，但又统摄全局，使整体的场景一览无余。同时使作者能够在进退中显现态度，从而主导画面，俯视万物。这中俯瞰的姿态可充分掌控空间局势，在视觉转移与稳定判断中让观者产生强烈的代入感。在这一视角，贺丹可以自由的调控画面的节奏，驱动情节与事件。这种远观的俯瞰正体现了角度定位的意义。人群与事件在画面中平行展现，形成稳定的组合，编织生成陌生的意象，使那些冲突变得不易发现，它们被远距离分离，转变为一种细节的呈现，使整体趋向的人群与事件细节并存，使整体的荒诞与细节的真实产生冲突的力量，这样的叙事性被各种暗喻的象征物所揭示，如《人群之二》中的大会堂，《民族英雄》中的雕塑、大树、旗帜等等符号。不言自明的逻辑性被熟悉的陌生物代替，现实的必然性被置于质问的状态，从而间接的对观者产生一种压力。《大飞机》中的飞机、《绿地》中的宇航员及《狗熊》、《魔术》中的白布等等这些熟悉的陌生物，在画面中形成多变的不稳定因素，它们层层叠加，生成了贺丹绘画的第二自然。

贺丹在作品中透露了有关观看的真相，他以45度的观看角度带给我们看清事实的视野，通过对群体状态的人的描绘来揭示隐匿在现实深处的意识洪流，在他的画面中，涌动的人群成为意识的表征，他通过对生活化细节的描绘，使他所营造的第二自然落到了人世间，从而与风俗性的自然主义描绘划清了界限。写实主义背后的审美记忆，是基于对生活的体验，贺丹以异于生活的主观表现，沿着现实的沟壑将记忆的层层裂隙重新联结，组合为有待阐释的意指。某种程度上，我们所谓的体验是生活片段的叠加组合，记忆却是由思维整合的结果。透过视觉，记忆成为隐藏在图像深处的意识，在画面中一一复现。贺丹画面整体出现的人群是对个体人的一种束缚，他透露了人群之中个人的拘谨、封闭与相互间形成的矛盾，他用内隐式的隐喻空间揭示了个体在群体当中的状态。

贺丹的艺术与生活背景决定了其作品的复杂性，他的作品拒绝了种种先入为主的判断，以45度的客观视角为观者提供了观察现实生活的另一种图景。他的作品是超越绘画性的，他通过对画面的绝对主导，通过不断调用的生活细节描绘，来构建艺术家观念中的第二自然。他的作品是基于社会性的现实主义概念，经由贺丹式的人群图像符号，使绘画中的现实性场景与事件成为一种象征性的寓言。贺丹说他的艺术不再提供令人心旷神怡的审美性，而是通过对自我记忆的片段性联结，以重造现实世界的独特性图像去营造社会学意义上的审美观感。

2019年6月7日星期五

The meaning of 45 overlook

-the recognition of He Dan’s work

Yang Feng

A few years ago, He Dan said that he would give me some canvas and oil paint, and let me start oil painting. I don't know if he really meant it or just made a joke. But as a printmaker, I had to show my standpoint. So I smiled and said to him that I didn't like oil painting. In fact, I don't really dislike oil paintings, nor do I only care about my own art. Speaking of it, these are just the momentary emotions. That year I went to Europe and visited a large number of museums and art galleries. What I’ve seen was that almost all of them exhibit classical oil paintings. From then on, the impressions of classical oil paintings left in my mind were just a nitty-gritty mass of details, and all these caused me a complete drain of energy. Then I came up with the decision "I am studying printmaking". Now I think that made some sense. On the one hand, I proved my poor understanding of techniques of classical oil painting. On the other hand, I was convinced that the technique of classical oil painting would  lead to self-limiting.

I like to see He Dan's paintings because I personally have never regarded his work as a paintings. It is easy to identify He Dan's work because his work is highly recognizable. Since the 1990s, He Dan has developed a stable image model. Those work with broad perspectives, are as calm as the charts of cultural anthropology, and become a unique pattern in his works. In his early pictures you can see the theme of "some people", which over time evolved into “a group of people” in later works. If you go deeper and deeper analiyzing and sensing  you will realize the layered meaning of his work. In his works, people can feel his attention to specific topics, such as the seasonal events that are always happening in the picture, and they are given symbolic meaning. You can feel the charm of a uniting shackle, and you can also find that everyone is part of this enchantment. People are attracted by certain events. Some people compare the paintings of He Dan with the works of the 16th century Dutch painter Peter Bruegel. It may be that both of them  have something in common. But obviously, He Dan is not a custom-made painter. The realistic scene of life is only an external representation in He Dan's works. His works are filled with people, the crowd is often surrounded by events, and an invisible group is built up. The image of a cordon makes this realistic picture with a clear narrative structure ambiguous. The crowds in his paintings, stacked and stacked again, are wrapping the direction of meaning in divergence and indicate the pre-set goals. This is the Hedan-style painting mode. His works have been entangled in numerous meanings of crowd-gathering relationships and reasons, and there are even thousands of crowd pictures. He uses this intensive depiction to create a grand narrative field that uses the crowd to form a unified directional memory, which stirs up the sediment that precipitates in our consciousness or the unconscious. This is the residue of a combination of collective memory and individual memory. He Dan uses the aesthetics of the life plot to detect the traces of the depths of history.

His paintings have a prototype of life plot, which is easy to interpret as a kind of genre painting, especially the folk life scenes in northern China, which have a strong sense of locality and belonging. He Dan is a native of northern Shanxi province. The highland landscape and folk life are the lingering shadows of the artist. Depicting real life itself was once one of the most concerned subjects of his generation. In fact, the principle of realism composition is also a product of foreign influences. To a certain extent, it is the method of literary writing that we collectively abide by. Realist literary thought has become a collective creative mode, which would also dominate the individual's cultural concept. He Dan is very acquainted with this method of creation. His works in the external form make us feel very familiar. We easyly accept this concept of realism, but his picture will lead people to explore the meaning behind the painting. Those paintings of sudden events, those of people waiting to see and gather make us search for answers in the depths of memory. His works seem to help us save memories and prevent us from forgetting, and they bring us into a continuous wait-and-see state. It is precisely because of this take of a realistic lifescape wrapped into the esthetics of realism that makes the work more expressive. Through the re-creation of reality, He Dan created a typical plot different from life, and built a grand space beyond reality, providing viewers with an optimal perspective.

In fact, He Dan set a viewing angle in his painting, from which he guided us to look at the direction of the crowd. He chose to show the content of the painting from a 45-degree angle of view. I defined this angle as a visual attitude that can be raised and lowered, so that the painting could not be focused just from one point, but the whole painting was taken to make the overall scene unobstructed. At the same time, the author can choose and vary his attitude on his own demand in the advance and retreat, thus leading through the painting and looking down on everything. This overlooking posture can fully control the space situation, and let the viewers have a strong sense of substitution in visual transfer and stable judgment. In this perspective, He Dan is free to control the rhythm of the painting and drive the plot and events. This far-sighted view reflects the meaning of angular positioning. The crowds and events are displayed in parallel in the painting, forming a stable combination, interweaving the two to create strange images, making those conflicts difficult to find, as they are separated from each other, turned into a detailed representation, making up the overall trend of the crowd and event details coexistence, the overall absurdity and the reality of the details of the conflicting power. Such a narrative is revealed by various metaphorical symbols, such as in the "Crowd of the Two" in the City Hall, "National Heroes" it´s the motive of a sculpture, tree, flags, and so on. The self-evident logic is replaced by a familiar strangeness, and the inevitability of reality is placed in a state of questioning, which indirectly creates a pressure on the viewer. The planes in "Big Aircraft", the astronauts in "Green Space" and the bears, the white cloth in "Magic" and so on, are familiar with the strangeness, which form a variety of unstable factors in the painting and are building the artificial nature of He Dan's painting.

In his work, He Dan revealed the truth about watching. He showed us the perspective of the facts with a viewing angle of 45 degrees. Through the depiction of the people in various group states, he reveals the torrent of consciousness hidden in the depths of reality. In the picture, the surging crowd becomes a symbol of consciousness. Through the depiction of the details of life, the artificial nature he created falls into the human world, thus clearing the boundaries set up by customary naturalistic depiction. The aesthetic memory behind realism is based on the experience of life. He Dan uses this subjective expression different from life to reconnect the layers of memory along the gap of reality and combines them into meanings to be explained. To some extent, what we call experience is a superposition of life segments, and memory is the result of thinking integration. Through vision, memory becomes a consciousness hidden deep in the image, which is reproduced in the painting one by one. The overall appearance of the screen by He Dan is a kind of restraint on the individual. He reveals the contradictions of the individual's restraint, closure and mutual formation. He uses the implicit metaphorical space to reveal the status of the individual in the group. .

He Dan's artistic and living background determines the complexity of his work. His work rejects all kinds of preconceived judgments and provides the viewer with another perspective of observing real life with an objective perspective of 45 degrees. His work is beyond painting and constructs the artificial nature of the artist's concept through the absolute dominance of the picture and the continuous depiction of life details. His work is based on the concept of social realism, through which  He Dan’s image produces symbols of crowd making within realistic scenes and events in the painting as a symbolic fable. He Dan said that his art no longer provides a pleasant aesthetic, but through the fragmentation of self-memory recreates the unique images of the real world, to create a sense of aesthetics in the sociological sense.

Friday, June 7, 2019