很多年了，每次到王劲松那里，目的是去看油画、观念摄影、装置、录像作品，从“后八九”至今一路看他浮在风口浪尖上，发展变化过来，而每次却都是以和他聊水墨而终，那是他暗藏水底的锚。我们是同学，而且都是水墨画人物专业里的大写意专修科，所以说，看他突然又画水墨了，我一点不觉得突然，就像自己在画似的。这种感觉理论家可能只能想象。  
劲松的这个水墨工程构建多年，真不能说它是个什么，但可以说它不是什么。它不是观念水墨，不是抽象水墨，不是水墨装置，不是实验水墨，当然更不是新学院派水墨或新文人画。它就是水墨画—用水墨语言画的画，这个水墨画不是画种，就像作为传统的水墨和水墨的传统，其实是两回事。   我们一旦被材料和形式给拴住了，去寻求材料和形式上的假突破，没有解决传统的困境，反而对语言失去了把握，题材也就受制，语言的指向性却遗失了。真不该去放大传统里一些局部，夸张成为虚无缥缈，就像孙振华所批评的水墨画中的“玄学”，1“恶性透支画面所负载的精神成分，无根据地将其夸大为漫无边际的语言牛皮，动不动就说自己在表现宇宙意识，在表现神秘东方文化的深厚内涵，表现某种深不可测的人类永恒精神。”抽象水墨画和实验水墨，都被动地企图使传统的水墨语言现代化。“我们前卫艺术、当代艺术的创作，对我们的历史有时间上地点上的盲点。时间上的盲点就是过分简单地面对了那么复杂的历史。我们几乎没有能力去面对它，没有理论准备。地点上的盲点是我们一般的都生活在异语生活里一种靠翻译包装起来的地带。”2这种情况下，我认为要想实现鲁虹提出的让“抽象水墨画在完成了语言转型的阶段性目的后，重要的任务是从语言层面的清理转入到对当下现实的关注中，进而以自己的特殊方式对变化中的社会与人的状态作出有力的反应”。3是一个不可能的任务。不过，我也反对孙振华以曲高和寡这样的概念来想象大众文化和知识精英对抽象水墨的拒绝和认同，大众不见得不习惯于被抽象麻醉，精英也不见得都参玄，我认为，“水墨画表达的有效性的问题”4不能以受众阶级论。如果放弃形而上的制作，水墨是有知识量的。因而我反对孙振华的水墨是一个画种的观点。5水墨是一种语言，如此而已。它确实有独特的言说方式，一旦它回归到中国独特的视觉语言的角度，它就从一个画种，一种材料中解放而至自由，也就没有了孙振华所苦恼的“传统水墨与近现代以来中国变化了的文化情景的矛盾，中国传统水墨与西方的古典艺术、现代艺术乃至于当代艺术的矛盾，传统水墨与经过了几十年革新后的现代水墨的矛盾，中国传统水墨、现代水墨与当代中国艺术的矛盾”，水墨“为什么到现在反而没有自己独特的言说方式了呢”? 6正因为不分画种，水墨语言才成立。一分画种，或材料特征，这个传统就已经闭锁了，就又回到多年前的穷途末路或底线说的老调上。我比较认同王璜生“‘水墨’是一种‘语言’系统，更是一个文化问题，它曾经或者现在仍然以一种不断臻于完善化的叙述方式表达它与社会的默契关系，同时，也承载着东方人对这一文化问题所具有的情结和理想。因为水墨不仅仅是一种媒体，它还有中国文化的东西”7的说法。王南溟认为“水墨文化论可以看成是对水墨身份论同属一种性质的深化表述，让水墨作出一种肯定式的文化学承诺，通过肯定文化的固有特征来肯定水墨”。我却认为，还有一种对水墨的肯定式的文化承诺作出否定的水墨文化，不绕口令地说，就是反传统，更土点去说，就是创新，而加入传统。有趣的是，王南溟所批判的“水墨变成了一种表面文章”，恰恰和他的媒体论有关。8王劲松的水墨，不是观念先行，也不谈玄，和材料有关但更和语言有关，涉及了但并不全是有关水墨材料利用的问题，因为他竟然一再地和我大谈应物象形，应物象形可和写实风马牛不相及，这点其实只有会画水墨的人才懂。可惜这个关系完全被现代性和传统冲突后的几代宗师给弄偏了，好在我们其实离历史很近，穷途是事实，末路在人世间是不存在的。劲松的关键词是说唱俑、霍去病墓石刻、梁楷、徐渭、八大，飞机、轮船、大炮、紧张状态、今天的人和居所。对他来说，黑白是非常经典的形式，而且是有墨韵的黑白。黑白的愉悦。我知道他说的是自然观，水墨独特的精神图式所牵扯着的对时空的感性触摸，妙不可言，却一点也不玄，所以他不是去控制，而是去把握，一看就是画出来的，不是做出来的。战争题材引发的陌生的美感就是他在知识的边界间游弋的状态，和古人的知黑守白，似与不似之间等等是有约定的，说的都是空间和时间的结合，放弃式的占领。  
于是我邀请劲松到我的新“长征”空间来做展览。“长征”空间开张第一个展览先来个水墨展，一点也不突然。实际上“长征”的命题里很大一块是关于水墨的，“长征”第十站就设在大凉山的西昌长征卫星发射站，和基地的科学家和军人交流意识形态与上层建筑的关系，艺术和受众的关系。从事中国最尖端科技，拥有最精华的科技知识的科学家，他们所使用的工作语言是科学的具可通约性语言，科学语言是不分国界和民族的。有意思的是，当他们业余在创作书画时，用的是极端民族性的语言，画着牡丹孔雀。相反，基地的艺术家的工作任务是用水墨表现社会生活，具体是画火箭进山等题材绘画，而他们又很排斥这种创作，希望能够画小桥流水老树昏鸦。传统与现代性的对立融化在每个人的自然观上面，就像卫星基地的科学家、艺术家身上的矛盾。中国传统的科技与艺术都是中国的一种精神、一种文化的最精华的东西，它们和自然观的关系表现在视觉文化中的营养，被我们忽略。无论是长征卫星发射站的科学家还是军队艺术家，都约定俗成地把文人画传统取代了中国的视觉文化复杂而有机的传统，把生活符号化了，他们同样认为，规矩方圆，火箭桥梁，美学上是不正确的，而忘记了我们的绘画传统中，曾经反复出现过社会生活的画面。劲松的水墨战争系列，就在西昌参加“长征”专辟的关于水墨的专题展和与西昌市美协关于水墨画困境的研讨会。画水墨都画到困境里去了，只能说以画为生的人太多，以说画为生的人也多。论水墨论到困境里去了，可能是做艺术家个案研究和策展研究结合的人太少，话语太多。越职业越形而上，这是哪一行都存在的事实。但现在要人不“做”画而去画画，比较难，因为现在画是为展而画的，不像以前是给自己画的，或是给别人画的，或是给宫里庙里画的，都是画的时候就有理有用，现在是画给同行看的，展览了比赛了流通了才有用。劲松的水墨战争系列是个工程，因而我的策展方式旨在突显他的工作和时空的关系。以现场感取代制作感，以实时性扫除水墨的表演性对水墨品格的出卖。在这个位于北京朝阳区大山子新兴的艺术区798工厂内， 250平方米展厅的七米高的车间里，我邀请王劲松用水墨进行一次美学冒险，为解放水墨而工作。其结果是画在墙上的一幅10米乘7米的巨幅大写意水墨壁画，画面和战争或自由，或与这个旧车间那如火如荼的大生产年代的想象有关。798厂的建造曾得到了前苏联的帮助，由东德设计，是鲍豪斯样式的建筑，工厂在1951年建成，建国初期这个工厂用来生产军用的电子设备，曾是共和国的骄傲，后来由于行业的没落，此地进入了后光荣时代。我把这个艺术空间设立为策展实验室和工作站，目的是能动地用以研究和实践展示文化和艺术原创，实践与话语，艺术对象与文本，观众与作品的关系。在脚手架上“应物象形”的王劲松，每抹一笔黑，就意味着展出结束后我得多抹一笔白把画盖掉，这个作品既存在又消失，是关于展览如何开始又如何结束的艺术家和策展人以水墨而做的对话。水墨，其实说的是时间。在空间中说时间。            水墨从墙上下来太久了。千年了吧？        2003年4月7日于北京大山子长征空间   1.鲁虹、孙振华《破除“玄学”，解放水墨》 2.高士名与笔者语 3.鲁虹、孙振华《破除“玄学”，解放水墨》 4.鲁虹、孙振华《破除“玄学”，解放水墨》 5.我们一定要破除这样的误解，即水墨只能以材质的方式进入中国当代艺术，作为一个单独的艺术种类，它在中国当代艺术中将不复存在。这当然是有违于创作实践的。我们认为，正像中国当代油画与其它当代艺术样式仍然保留着种类身份一样，中国当代水墨在中国当代艺术中仍然会有着自己的独特资格。这正好说明，当代艺术既不强调种类的差别，也不反对种类差别的存在。鲁虹、孙振华《为什么要“重新洗牌”——关于水墨艺术在当代文化中的存在方式及其可能的对话》 6.鲁虹、孙振华《为什么要“重新洗牌”——关于水墨艺术在当代文化中的存在方式及其可能的对话》 7.王璜生《谋求一个对话空间》 8.王南溟《我为什么称“实验水墨”为“贴面水墨”》  Operation Free Ink
Lu Jie  Since just after 1989, every time I have gone to Wang Jinsong's place, my goal has been to look at his oil paintings, conceptual photography, installations, and video works. He has been on the cusp of every big movement, developing and changing constantly. But every time I went there we ended up talking about ink, as if ink painting is his anchor, deep below the water. We were classmates at the China Academy of Fine Arts, and we both enjoyed our mandatory ink painting classes tremendously. So for me to see that he is once again painting in ink, I am not surprised at all; it is like seeing myself paint. Theorists, perhaps, can only imagine what this might feel like.  Jinsong's current ink project has been in the works for many years. I can't say what it is, but I can say what it is not. It is not "conceptual ink painting." It is not "abstract ink painting."It is not an "ink painting installation. "It is not" xperimental ink painting."And of course it is not "Neo-Academic ink painting"or "New Literat painting" It is just ink painting-painted in the language of ink. Here, ink painting is not a genre, just as the tradition of ink painting and "traditional ink painting?are two quite different things.  As soon as we become tied down in questions of materials and forms, or search for false breakthroughs in terms of material and form, we have not only failed to resolve the problem of "tradition,"but have also lost our control over language. Subject matter, then, is also limited, as the referential power of language is lost. We should not look to enlarge a few details from traditional painting, exaggerating them into vagueness and evanescence; this would be equivalent to Sun Zhenhua's critique of the "metaphysics" of ink painting,①"Over-conceptual, didactic ink painting undertakes the components of the spirit, without a base it expands into a linguistic oxhide without boundaries, claiming to represent the consciousness of the universe, to express some mystical essence of Chinese culture, to express some unfathomable and eternal human spirit? Abstract ink painting and experimental ink painting both passively attempt to modernize the language of traditional ink painting. "Our avant-garde and contemporary creation is blind to our history in terms of time and place. In terms of time, it approaches a complex history too simply. We are almost powerless to face this history, we are not theoretically prepared. In terms of place, the problem is that we live on materials translated from other languages, packaged and shipped in from elsewhere."② In this situation, I believe we must realize Lu Hong's idea that "abstract ink painting, after realizing its goal of linguistic transformation, must move away from simple linguistic clarification and toward attention to the realities that lie beneath it, using its unique style to react powerfully a changing society and the attitudes of the people in it."③ This is an impossible responsibility. However, I also oppose Sun Zhenhua's framing of the problem in terms of "highbrow songs find no singers." Sun believes that this is why the masses reject abstract ink painting while the cultural elite embraces it. But it is unfair to say that the masses are not used to being "anaesthetized" by abstraction, nor that the elite is entirely capable of functioning on a metaphysical level. I believe that this question of "the efficacy of ink painting" cannot be resolved by separating viewers into classes.④   If we set aside this preoccupation with the metaphysical, ink painting still carries intellectual weight. Thus, I reject Sun Zhenhua's notion that ink painting is a generic classification.⑤  Ink painting is a language, and nothing but a language. It has its unique expressive conventions, and as soon as it returns to China's unique perspective on visual language, it is liberated from its burden as a genre or as a material. It thus frees itself from the contradictions which so agonize Sun Zhenhua, contradictions "between traditional ink painting and the cultural realities of modern China; between Chinese traditional ink painting and Western classical, modern, and contemporary art; between traditional ink painting and modern ink painting as it stands after several decades of changes; and between Chinese traditional and modern ink painting and Chinese contemporary art." He asks, "why does ink painting still lack its own expressive conventions?"⑥
 The language of ink painting can establish itself only in the absence of generic classification. As soon as we speak about ink as a genre, or about its special characteristics as a material, we have shut ourselves down, returned to the dead-end roads and hackneyed themes of many years ago. I tend to agree with Wang Huangsheng's idea that " 'link and wash' is a kind of 'linguistic' system, and moreover a question of culture. It has always strived to attain depictive perfection in expressing its tacit relationship with society, and at the same time, it bears the weight of Chinese people's ideals toward this cultural question. This is because ink painting is not merely a medium, but a piece of Chinese culture. "Wang Nanming believes that  "A cultural theory of ink painting can be seen as a further development of an identity-based theory of ink painting. Both force ink painting to undertake a definite cultural promise, pigeonholing ink painting by pinning it to a set of immanent cultural characteristics. On the other hand, I believe there is another kind of defining cultural promise projected onto ink painting that creates a negative ink painting culture. Speaking plainly, this is the idea of going against tradition, or to put it in an uglier way, the idea of creating the new and incorporating it into tradition. Interestingly enough, Wang Nanming's idea that "ink painting has become a facade"is connected directly to his theory that it is determined by its medium.  In Wang Jinsong's ink painting, concept does not take precedence over other considerations, nor is metaphysics involved. It has to do with materials, but more than that, with language, something which touches upon, but is not entirely determined by the question of the materials. For this reason, he is still talking with me about how the idea that "the shape should convey the object"(ying wu xiang xing) has nothing in common with realism. Only people who paint in ink can understand this. Sadly this connection was set aside by several generations of ink masters who came after the conflict between tradition and modernity. Fortunately, we are not very far from this history, and while wrong turns are a reality, true dead-ends do not exist. Jinsong's key words here are Han-dynasty ceramic figures of singers, sculptures from the tomb of General Huo Qubing, masters Liang Kai, Xu Wei, Bada Shanren, airplanes, steamboats, big explosions, nervousness, today's people and their dwellings. As far as he's concerned, black and white is a classic form, and moreover it is the rhythm of black and white, the joy of black and white. I know he speaks of a view of nature, saying that the unique spirit of ink painting implicates a sensibility and feeling for time and space, ineffably subtle, but not metaphysical, something we can't control but can manipulate. One look and we know it's painted, not made. The way in which this bellicose subject matter elicits an inexplicable and strange sense of beauty reflects Jinsong's cruises on the boundaries of knowledge, similar to the ancient painters'compositional principles of "knowing the black and preserving the white"(zhi hei shou bai) and "between reality and unreality"(si yu bu si zhi jian). We are speaking here of the intersections of time and space, an occupation that is at the same time an abandonment.  Therefore I invited Wang Jinsong to come to the 25000 Cultural Transmission Center and do an exhibition. The fact that the first exhibition in our Long March space is an ink exhibition is not surprising at all. In fact, a big part of the Long March has been about ink painting, particularly our tenth site, at Daliang Mountain, near the Xichang Long March Rocket Launcher Station in Sichuan province. Here we held a dialogue with the scientists and soldiers at the base about the relationship ideology and superstructure, about the relationship between art and viewer. These scientists, who work on the very cusp of Chinese technology, and have the nation's most essential scientific knowledge, speak a common language in their work. The language of science knows no political or ethnic boundaries. Interestingly, when they paint in their spare time, they use an extremely Chinese language, painting peonies and peacocks. The professional artists hired by the satellite base, however, are often assigned to express social life by painting their rockets and other similar subject matter. They were quite dismissive of this sort of creation, preferring to paint in the traditional motifs of literati painting. The contrast between tradition and modernity runs together in everyone's view of nature, just like the conflicting identities of these people as scientists and artists run together. Chinese traditional technology and Chinese traditional art both manifest a Chinese spirit, something most essential to a culture, and their connection to our view of nature manifests itself in the nourishment of visual culture, something we have ignored. Whether it is the scientist-artists of the Long March Rocket Launcher Station or military artists, all are accustomed to use the traditions of literati painting to substitute for the complicated and arbitrary traditions of Chinese visual culture. They turn life into symbols, believing that the concrete objects of modern life are not aesthetically precise, and forgetting that even in the Chinese painterly tradition, images of society and life have come appeared many, many times.  Wang Jinsong's war series in ink participated in this discussion on the Long March, and in a special exhibition and research forum held in conjunction with the Xichang Municipal Artists?Association on the problems of ink painting. Ink painters tend to paint themselves straight into a trap. We can only say this is because too many people live off of their paintings, or because too many people live off of talking about paintings. When our discussion of ink painting falls into this trap, perhaps it is because too few people combine individual research on particular artists with curatorial research, and because the standard discourse is deafening. The more professional, the more metaphysical: this is a reality of any field. But asking people now to stop "doing"paintings and begin painting paintings is tough, because now paintings are painted for exhibitions, unlike in the past when painters painted for themselves, or for other people, or for the palace or the temple. All of these models involved painting for a purpose; now we paint for our colleagues, and only if a work has been exhibited, has competed, has circulated is it considered useful.  Jinsong's ink war series is a project, and as a result my curatorial method aims to point out the connection between his work, time, and space. Here he uses the feel of the place to substitute for the feel of creation, uses temporality to erase the performativity of ink painting that comes from the abandonment of its character. In this former factory turned hip art compound in the Dashanzi area of Chaoyang District, Beijing; in the seven meter high space of a 250 square meter workshop, I have invited Wang Jinsong to use ink in an aesthetic adventure, working to liberate ink painting. The result is a massive, and massively enjoyable ten-by-seven meter mural in ink, which talks about war, or freedom, or our imagination of this factory itself when it was deep in the throes of military production. Factory 798 was built with Soviet aid and East German designs in the style of the Bauhaus. Established in 1951, the factory produced military electronics in the earliest years of the People's Republic. Once the pride of a nation, it later fell from glory as the industry declined. I have established this art space as a curatorial laboratory and workstation, the goal being to research and manifest the connections between display culture and artistic creation, practice and discourse, art object and text, and viewer and artwork. Wang Jinsong sits on his scaffold depicting realistic objects: guns, bombs, planes. Every time he dips his brush black, it means simply that I must later dip one more brush white to cover up his painting and restore the space to its original condition once the exhibition ends. The work at once exists and disappears, a dialogue in ink between a curator and an artist about how an exhibition begins and how it ends. Ink is actually about time, about time configured in space.  Ink painting has been down from the wall for too long. A thousand years, perhaps?  April 7, 2003 Dashanzi, Beijing    1Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua, Explode Metaphysics, Liberate Ink Painting 2In the words of Gao Shiming and the author 3Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua, Explode Metaphysics, Liberate Ink Painting 4Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua, Explode Metaphysics, Liberate Ink Painting 5We need to clear up this misunderstanding, the wrong thinking that ink painting exists is because of the specificity of ink as material. We believe that just like oil painting and other contemporary art forms, which are all respected as one genre in contemporary Chinese art, contemporary Chinese ink painting should also have its status as a concrete genre in contemporary Chinese art. We should not judge contemporary art by the differentiation in genre, but must still respect this differentiation. Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua, Why We Must “huffle the Cards Again”On the Style of Existence of Ink Painting in Contemporary Culture and the Dialogues it Makes Possible. 6Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua, Why We Must”huffle the Cards Again”On the Style of Existence of Ink Painting in Contemporary Culture and the Dialogues it Makes Possible.