Ban Lan Pu
-- Lu Zhengyuan’s Experiment, or the Possibility of Art History
By Bao Dong
Ban Lan Pu, a lost book compiled by someone in the Song Dynasty, revealed its splendor in later records, for instance, Research on Fine Arts by Shen Zinan in the earlier Qing Dynasty mentioned that it recorded the colors of flowers, fruits, birds, specialities and sceneries of the prosperous Northern Song Dynasty, when street painters often colored what they painted according to the Spectrum so as to achieve the true-to-life effect. Actually, Ban Lan Pu might be an encyclopedia of colors. Although it was lost, we could still imagine the book’s expatiation and praise of colors according to the description of mundane life details in books such as Record of Life in the Capital. It’s not unexpected to have books like that in the Northern Song Dynasty, with the rise of Neo-Confucianism as the background in addition to the prosperity of the city and civil culture. The ethos of “investigating things to attain knowledge” and “observation should focus on the principle” (By Shao Yong) was promoted by the scholar stratum, and it naturally influenced the study of painting of that time. “Realistic painting” in the imperial-court painting of Song Dynasty was such a special phase in Chinese art history that there was never so much emphasis on “verisimilitude” before or after it. There was even an absolutized viewpoint that, “The only thing matters in painting is verisimilitude. It’s perfect with special verisimilitude, superior with some verisimilitude and inferior with little verisimilitude.” (By Han Qi) The widespread examples of “when two bulls fight, their tails must be between their legs; when peacocks climb, they must lift their left legs first” revealed artists’ pursuit of knowledge verisimilitude in painting. The titles such as “sketch” Zhao Chang and “piercing window paper” Yi Yuanji originated in the painters’ pursuit of verisimilitude. In such an atmosphere for sketch, it’s unimaginable that Ban Lan Pu didn’t have any influence on painters of that time. Although there was no immediate evidence, the fact that painters like Zhao Chang laid so much emphasis on the authenticity of colors was still a sensible proof in some aspect.
Xuanhe Book on Painting commented Zhao Chang as “famed for being good at painting flowers and fruits. The branches he painted were quite lifelike, and the colors were especially brilliant.” Others recorded Zhao Chang as “good at painting flowers. Every morning after the dew disappeared, he would observe flowers along the rail and tone the colors accordingly, naming himself ‘Sketch Zhao Chang’.” Or “Zhao Chang painted the braches skillfully. The flowers danced in the dim rain, smiling in the wind; the fruits were so lifelike that it’s difficult to distinguish them from the real ones.” Elegant branches, color sketch and lifelikeness, these characteristics of Zhao Chang’s painting had already included a concept of visual authenticity, but Chinese art history didn’t develop a tradition of color verisimilitude thereby. On the contrary, palace painting was belittled by later scholars. Ouyang Xiu commented him as “Zhao Chang’s flowers were lifelike. Although he was outstanding in his time, the strokes were still too soft and vulgar, without the vigor of ancient people.” Guo Ruoxu commented him as “he didn’t focus on the whole tree, and his braches often followed a certain style, but only his colors were peerless.” These might be partly complimentary and partly pejorative, but what Mi Fu commented in The History of Painting was a bit offensive, “People like Zhao Chang and Wang You were untalented but crafty. Although it was abhorrent, we had to record them with sympathy for their decorativeness.” With scholar painting dominating the art discourse power, the realistic techniques of colors were belittled to the decadent stage, and the brilliance and naturalness of colors, considered “vulgar” and “craftsmanlike”, was completely excluded from the high level scholar painting system and only left a bit in palace and folk art. The loss of Ban Lan Pu was partly due to objective causes such as wars, and the rupture of knowledge pedigree and transition of tastes was also a background that cannot be neglected. In the Middle of Ming Dynasty, the word “multicolored” that was used to describe the heterogeneous brilliant colors of things in nature had already declined to a kind of lacquerwork. The technique of multicolor in Lacquer Decoration Record referred to the painting method with two or three different emblazonries.
For the time being, the lost Ban Lan Pu only represents an already-gone historical possibility, but it implies the continuous presence of the historical possibility, allowing us to realize that history is the result of a series of possibilities rather than the outcome of a single decisive factor. That means we could emancipate history from the fixed discourse framework, so it will no longer be a rigescent narration or bald explanation. The raking up of Ban Lan Pu is intended to trigger the imagination of a historical possibility, which could resist all sorts of historical determinism and progressivism about the past and future. To be brief, by emancipating the past, we might also be able to emancipate the present and future.
Actually, art today is already in a dilemma, with the temptation from historical progressivism and the chill from historical finalism. The squeezing from the two sides has depressed art practice to be extremely near-sighted. People dissert current validity by vying for future discourse power, but they eagerly wish to gain historical significance right now, therefore, the fertile and soft soil of art practice hardens under the double squeezing.
I discuss some of Lu Zhengyuan’s art experiments in recent years in this grand background of art history firstly because I want to provide a wide context for the present so as to endue modernity with a fluid space. Meanwhile, as a case study, many of Lu’s works include an attitude of art history, so it’s better to taste them in various microcosmic art history contexts. In his art experiments, art history appears as the jungle interwoven with various subjects, tones, preferences, media and techniques, to be cut, transplanted and grafted as new plants in the laboratory. The significance doesn’t lie in whether they can grow up to big trees that are accustomed to the previous jungle ecology, but in the respect for a possibility although it might only exist in a flash.
The exhibition selects these works to focus on painting-related issues in art history, such as verisimilitude and reality, aesthetics and palate, tone and individuality, works and non-works. For instance, Lu deliberately painted a collection of unreal things with super realistic techniques, such as artificial flowers, dead fish and shrimps and skinned rabbit, which were painted in great verisimilitude, but were intentionally far away from the lifelikeness in traditional realistic aesthetics. He has ruptured the seemingly natural connection between realistic techniques and realism. With the same realistic techniques, he accurately replicated many random paint blocks in larger size, turning the free strokes in formalistic painting aesthetics into the content of realistic painting. He also painted the photos and then photographed them again, posed artificial flowers and fruits for photographs, or added a “giant” and lifelike fly to a small size seascape. In these cases, verisimilitude is merely taken as the basic technique or skill, and the contexts such as reality, realism, aesthetics and palates behind it are eliminated, therefore, verisimilitude itself is what he intends to present. In this situation, verisimilitude, as a “ready-made article” of visual culture, is posted in a series of observing situations, thus brings about the ambiguity that doesn’t exist originally. Those with a preference for realistic ability might be amazed at the verisimilitude of these works, or they may feel the verisimilitude is not what they are used to, because Lu doesn’t intend to – like the realistic painting or photography they enjoyed before – cover up the crack between the works and the real world. Instead, he only provides trueness on the exhibition wall, and considers it a rational rather than a perceptual content. However, Lu doesn’t keep a stiff face, but makes it jokingly. Humor, wit and irony always belong to intellectuality, so they refuse the state of “sumption”.
Actually, there are “texts” of art history in Lu’s works, for instance, Boundless is obviously related to the story of da Vinci drawing eggs as a child. Many elementary textbooks in China use this story to emphasize the importance of basic skill training and the keystone is to observe subtly and capture different shapes of eggs. But this story is definitely coined by later people with its inconsistency with historical data – Vasari recorded that when Leonardo first visited his teacher Verrocchio, his techniques were so amazing that the teacher quit painting thereafter – what’s more crucial, there was no concept of considering sketch as an art training method in Florence in the Renaissance. Even in the subsequent art academic education, the objects of sketch training are the classical sculptures rather than the natural vulgarian of eggs because the aim of classical aesthetics is to establish an ideal aesthetic order. Interestingly, Lu re-deduced the made-up story again, and led it away from the original intention. At the beginning, he was simply sketching according the object, and later he was copying from those sketches one after another. What is different from the story of da Vinci is that Lu’s intention is to assimilate each egg to one another as much as possible although errors are unavoidable. If this work discusses the concept of realism, another relevant work aims to tease the idea of tone and individuality. He invited someone without any professional art training to “copy” – though the person didn’t have any idea of copying – different images of art masterpieces, altering them into awkward works with the same tone.
The creativity of Lu’s painting concept experiments always guides the audience to a concrete art history and aesthetic context, and also in a visual field of intertexuality and they are led to the subtle concepts and experience. It is exactly in these details that art history appears vigorous and never stops growing. And those seemingly dead braches, such as the tradition represented by Ban Lan Pu, has never lost its effectiveness. It can make the historical effectiveness more distinct and appreciable so as to help us to be more open and conscious in the face of the modern time.
March 29, 2013