qiu deshu Qiu Deshu - Art Solutionnewmedia.artsolution.net/.../QiuDeshu2012.pdf · ·...

Qiu Deshu

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Qiu Deshu

Qiu Deshu

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Foreword

I have been an admirer of Qiu Deshu’s work since the early 1980s

and have now been working with him for over twenty years.

His prestigious status in the field of Chinese contemporary

Ink Painting is due both to his initial prominence as an artist

working for the Revolution as a Red Guard, and his subsequent

early career as one of the founders of the ground-breaking

avant-garde Grass Society. His aesthetic trajectory since then

has been one of single-minded experimentation, oblivious of

and indifferent to, the siren voices of the art-market and its

fluctuating fashions.

It is therefore a pleasure to have been able, after numerous

attempts, to convince him to join us here in the West in an

exhibition of this chronological breadth and quality.

We are very grateful to Melissa J. Walt for her thoughtful

introduction which has elegantly elucidated the complex

evolution of Qiu’s varied output over the years and to Michael

Sullivan, the acknowledged doyen of Chinese modern art,

who has written the touching introduction. And finally we

would like to express our warmest appreciation to the generous

sponsor of the exhibition – Coutts – whose support has been

invaluable.

Michael Goedhuis

5

Thoughts about Qiu Deshu

Of how many contemporary artists, Eastern and Western, can it be said that contemplating their work gives the viewer pure visual pleasure? But if it does, is that enough? The virtue of the best of Chinese landscape painting, ancient and modern, is that it hints at a reality that lies beyond the visual image. With images as visually seductive as those of Qiu Deshu, that inner quality may not at once be apparent – but it is there, and gives an added depth to work that may appear at first, to the Western eye at least, as no more than visually beautiful. For years Qiu Deshu’s admirers have been familiar with his mountain landscapes in which his strong forms seem, even when vibrantly colourful, to be frozen, like ice, in time. But his imagination is very much alive, and in recent years he has broken free, to let his images to float freely over the paper, as though by some magic they had been quickened into life. Qiu Deshu seems, like Joan Miró, to be enjoying himself, and that sense of playful joy comes through to us. To be on the receiving end is a delightful experience!

Michael SullivanOxford, September, 2012

Soul of Fissures, 2012

Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 121 × 60 cm (473/4 × 231/2")6

Fissuring – Plum Blossoms, 2004

Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 180 × 90 cm (703/4 × 351/2") each panel

9

In the years since 1985, when Chinese artists were first granted a degree of artistic freedom, the venerable tradition of ink painting has been sub-jected to a dizzying array of transformations. The works of Qiu Deshu, a gifted painter and calligra-pher, transcend medium and subject to become modern iterations that both honour the cultural heritage of the past, and reject it. Combining pigment, ink, and paper and then rending and re-forming the pieces, Qiu has devised a technique that reflects his worldview and life experience. He calls the technique ‘fissuring.’ Qiu Deshu was born in Shanghai in 1948 as China’s long civil war was nearing its end. His childhood coincided with a period of consolida-tion in the years following Liberation in 1949. The 1950s were focussed on recovering from decades of civil unrest and war, implementing the Chi-nese Communist Party’s vision, and stabilizing society and economy. In this environment, Qiu Deshu’s artistic talents shone early. At school, teachers recognized his gift; and at home, his par-ents realized that paper and ink could still their son’s rambunctious nature. Qiu’s early training included all aspects of traditional painting, seal carving and scroll mounting, as well as drawing and Western-style painting. This exposure to traditional techniques made an especially strong impression, as is evident in his mature work. The Chinese world changed dramatically after 1949, but vestiges of traditional cultural ideals survived. One of these was a continued affinity for China’s ancient ink painting tradition. The social and political landscape of Qiu Deshu’s youth may have looked unlike anything in China’s past, but not everyone embraced the officially-approved socialist realist artistic agenda. During middle school, Qiu’s parents hired a private painting tutor who offered their son the most traditional of painting educations.

Qiu’s tutor subscribed to the ancient pedagogical technique of learning by copying. In 1963, on the eve of the political firestorm that ignited the Cultural Revolution, Qiu copied a work by the 17th century individualist painter Shitao, earning high praise for it from his tutor. By 1966, such undertakings were not only politically out of favour, but perilous. The defining event for Qiu Deshu’s generation was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Chairman Mao and political in-fighting among Communist Party leaders fuelled this decade of upheaval. Mao enlisted Qiu’s generation as the vanguard of this revolution, and charged them with the obliteration of the Four Olds: old culture, old customs, old ideas, old habits. Qiu was one of these dedicated Red Guards, but one whose artistic abilities were readily re-directed from copying old masters to producing Cultural Revolution propaganda: posters, cartoons, prints, and portraits extolling revolutionary themes and Chairman Mao himself. In 1968, Qiu was assigned to a factory, where his jobs included such physically demanding labour as shovelling coal. By virtue of this factory assignment, Qiu became a ‘worker,’ who, along with peasants and soldiers were venerated during the Cultural Revolution. Ironically, this classification also furthered Qiu’s artistic ambitions. As a worker-artist, he enjoyed special art classes and training opportunities. His growing reputation also led to his participation in a number of high-profile projects and exhibitions. Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled a major shift in official attitudes toward art and politics. The ensuing years were ones of reflection, as people sought to make sense of the previous ten years. Throughout China, young artists whose experiences had centred

Melissa J. Walt

The Art of Qiu Deshu

Two Demons, 1984

Mixed media on xuan paper 65 × 61 cm (251/2 × 24")

11

Fissuring – Red Rock and Snowy Mountain, 2011

Acrylic and xuan paper on canvas 182 × 182 cm (715/8 × 715/8")

on producing politically-charged images of the Cultural Revolution, began to search for new means of expression. In 1977, Qiu was re-assigned to a local cultural centre. From factory worker to cultural worker, Qiu was among this searching and disillusioned generation. In late 1979, Qiu and eleven colleagues, established an informal art society. First calling themselves the ‘Independent Painters’ Group,’ a name deemed too political for official tastes, they became the ‘Grass Society’ (Caocao hua she, 草草畫社). This seemingly innocent name-change, however, carried its own loaded connotations, meant to associate the artists with small weeds that flourish – overlooked and ubiquitous. In February 1980, a controversial exhibition of Caocao art ran briefly at the cultural center where Qiu worked. The group’s commitment to contemporary iterations of ink painting was less problematical for Party officials than their interest in abstraction and nudes – ideological landmines in official art circles. The group’s goal – independence of spirit, technique, and style – made Qiu a target of official criticism, and led to a dark emotional period for him. But from this adversity emerged renewed commitment to expressing his inner landscape. Along with life experience, ancient philosophy – ironically, among the traditions Qiu and his generation had tried to destroy – plays a key role in animating Qiu’s work. Traces of China’s traditional belief systems endured after 1949, and throughout his childhood, Qiu Deshu’s parents maintained their Buddhist faith. Qiu accompanied them on regular visits to make temple offerings. During the Cultural Revolution, when the ‘Little Red Book’ of Chairman Mao’s sayings was ubiquitous, Qiu supplemented this required reading with his own extracurricular reading of Buddhist sutras. It is to the sutras now that his work seems most indebted. The first Noble Truth of Buddhism teaches that life is suffering – something Qiu experienced (and witnessed) routinely during the Cultural Revolution. Buddhism also addresses the impermanence and illusory nature of existence. In the early 1980s, Qiu experimented with tearing and re-assembling his paintings. The process of

creation, destruction, and re-creation conveyed aspects of the artist’s experiences and inner life. With this ‘fissuring’ technique, Qiu reinforces the idea of impermanence, and the reconfiguring of one thing into another underscores the Buddhist belief in the emptiness of form. If the philosophical foundations of Qiu Deshu’s art draw on traditional belief systems, so is his work indebted to the Chinese landscape tradition. Where brush and ink once defined the forms of landscape, Qiu uses ink, colour, and paper in a collage-like process indebted to the techniques used for mounting scrolls. But for Qiu, mount-ing is central to the creative process, not merely a means to preserve and display a painting. The resulting works, from primordial rock to monu-mental precipice, share metaphysical space with Song dynasty masters like Guo Xi, Fan Kuan, and Ma Yuan. The monumental landscapes and misty lyrical scenes of the past closely reflected Daoist ideas and imagery, as do Qiu’s Big Landscape No. 6 (2001) and Mountainscape I (2004). Daoism maintains that the universe is in a constant state of flux, from form to formless-ness and back again. The physical landscape was considered the visible manifestation of the Dao, and painters sought to express the cosmic vitality that animates the world and its spirit essence (qi). Qiu transforms the language of landscape into a contemporary idiom of creative expres-sion (Fissuring – Red Rock and Snowy Mountain, 2011). He describes a breakthrough moment in 1982. During an intense period of criticism and struggle after the Caocao exhibition, one day he glanced down and at once became fully aware of cracks on the ground. In them he saw his own position mirrored; they seemed like eyes staring silently upward. From this ordinary moment of observation of something he had always seen but never been truly aware of, an extraordinary surge of creativity was sparked. Qiu Deshu’s imagination saw beyond the cracks in the ground to a new way of creation, of light where there had been bleakness, of form where before there had been only formlessness. For the viewer, it is a universe of infinite fascination, one which challenges us by revealing much – and obscuring even more.

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Calligraphy No.6, 2000-2001

Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 238 × 60 cm (94 × 231/2")

(opposite page: detail)

14

Mountainscape (red), 2005Ink, acrylic and xuan paper on canvas 200 × 360 cm (783/4 × 1413/4")

Fissuring – Landscape, 2012

Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 182 × 182 cm (713/4 × 713/4")

Substance, Self-Consciousness: Self Portrait, 1982

Ink and red ink paste on xuan paper 130 × 66 cm (51× 26")18

Animal Nature, 1990

Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 150 × 170 cm (59 × 67")


20

Five-Panel Mountainscape, 2005

Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 210 × 125.5 cm (821/2 × 491/2") each panel

24 25

Fissuring – Face to Face, 1989

Ink, acrylic and red ink paste on xuan paper 95 × 112 cm (371/2 × 44")


26 27

Mountainscape I, 2004

Ink on xuan paper and cardboard 122 × 244 cm (48 × 96")

29

Fissuring – Landscape No.8, 2004 – 2008




30 31

Fissuring – Sublimation No.3, 2009-2010



Buddhist Sublime, 1993

Ink and red ink paste on xuan paper and canvas 244 × 146 cm (96 × 521/2")

Cleft of Change – Origin – Sublimation, 1997

Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 240 × 140 cm (941/2 × 551/8")

Chanting, Fissuring No.8, 2011

Acrylic and xuan paper on canvas 80 × 160 cm (311/2 × 63")

37

Fissuring – Distant View of Pingpo, 1994-1995

Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 74 × 132 cm (29 × 52")

Fissuring – My Stamp, 199o

Mixed media on xuan paper67 × 130 cm (261/2 × 51")

38 39

Self-Portrait (Spirit), 1997-1998

Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 180 × 360 cm (703/4 × 1411/2")

41

Big Landscape No. 6, 2001



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Man and the Moon, 1988



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Soul of Fissures, 2012

Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas 121 × 60 cm (48 × 231/2")46

© Michael Goedhuis, 2012. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the prior permission of the publisher.

All images reproduced with permission

Design: Ornan RotemPrint and binding: Graphicom SRL, VeronaPhotography: Jaron James Photography

MICHAEL GOEDHUIS PUBLISHINGLondon 2012

61 Cadogan Square, Flat 3 London SW1X 0HZ

T +44 (0) 20 7823 1395 F +44 (0) 20 7823 2794

[email protected] www.michaelgoedhuis.com

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