Time and tradition. Celyn Bricker meets Lu Qing
Several years ago, while I was still a student and first learning about contemporary Chinese art, I had two considerable influences. The first was the artist Ai Weiwei, whose work I still greatly admire, and who needs no introduction. The second interest was of a very different kind. Rather than the work of an individual Chinese artist, I was more interested in a particular approach to art making, and this was typified by a single image I came across. It was a photograph of woman painting. It was a beautifully composed image, and showed the woman sat a table, with a small brush in hand. In front of her, stretching right to the foreground of the image, was an enormous scroll. Every section of the scroll was meticulously painted, although from the photograph it is not clear what the content of the painting is. While I was impressed by Ai Weiwei’s bombastic commitment to his political position, here I was moved by the profound commitment to the creation of a single artwork. I loved the repetition and simplicity of the piece, as well as its haptic quality: the fact that much of the work’s meaning was embedded in the fact that it was handmade, and painted by a single artist. Although I later forgot the name of this artist, the strength of this image remained with me. Why I mention this will become clear.
I now live in Beijing, and recently, following a series of unexpected events, I found myself in a taxi and on my way to Ai Weiwei’s studio. A friend with impressive contacts was having lunch with Lu Qing, and was able to extend the invitation. You may not recognise her name, but you will perhaps know who Lu Qing is: in the media she is usually referred to as simply as Ai Weiwei’s ‘long-standing wife’ - or some similar phrase - despite the fact that she is also a successful and internationally recognised artist in her own right. I didn’t know much about her work, and I wanted to use the opportunity to learn more about her artist practise that seems to receive so little coverage.
Over lunch Lu Qing spoke a little about her artistic background. She trained at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and specialised in banhua, or printmaking. I ask her if she still does any such work, but she says she hasn’t for many years; after finishing at the academy she painted primarily abstract works, using oil on canvas. Since 2000, however, she started working in a new way, using acrylic. She goes upstairs and brings down a small, slightly dusty exhibition catalogue, from a group show she had in Japan in 2002. She flicks to the back and shows me her work. It is a roll of Chinese silk, stretching the length of a room, covered in small black squares. At certain points the squares are almost entirely black, others only lightly shaded. Although it is geometrically constructed, the changes in tone suggest no overall pattern, and vary seemingly randomly over the length of silk. It is a simple but beautiful artwork, and impressive even in reproduction.
I’m interested to hear about the process of making an artwork of this scale. The image she shows me is one of 14 paintings. The series, she says, started in the year 2000, with each painting taking an entire year to complete. Each scroll is 82 feet long, and some years she finishes the length of the scroll, others she doesn’t; however much of the scroll is painted at the end of the year is the final state of the work. She describes the process of making the work as ‘continuous in time’, even though she may not paint a section every day. I ask her about the use of black paint, but she corrects me: she doesn’t use black, but a very dark grey colour, which can approximate more closely the different shades of black used in traditional Chinese painting. The use of this colour, she says, references that artistic tradition as well as being in some way elemental, or going back 'to the basics of things’.
The dichotomy between ‘Western painting’ (xihua) and ‘Chinese painting’ (guohua) is still strong in China, and Chinese art students to this day are asked to choose one or the other when beginning their studies. Lu Qing’s work draws from both traditions, although the artistic decisions she makes are not the result of laborious or lengthly contemplation. In describing her practise, the word she uses most often is ziran, meaning ‘natural’ or ‘naturally’ (as in English, it can also refer to ‘nature’ or the natural world). Her choices of colour, form and style all presented themselves ‘naturally’ to her - all were very intuitive decisions. The decision to begin working on this series was itself also a natural one: she says she made no particular or conscious decision to begin these pieces, she just started one day. Her entire approach has this instinctive, intuitive quality, and it is refreshing to hear someone speak honestly and openly about their artwork without feeling the need for excessive conceptual justification. She says that, 14 years ago, she didn’t necessarily expect to continue the process for this length of time. Nor does she know how long it will go on for.
I ask her if, when complete, the paintings feel at all like a diary: although they are of course a record of experience, I’m interested to know if Lu Qing is able to ‘read’ them in some sense, and identify individual days or periods of time within the painting. She says that it is in some ways a kind of ‘abstract diary’, in that it represents an abstracted emotional record. She says that she never sees the entire piece at one time, unless it is exhibited, as each completed section is rolled up to allow her to continue working on the subsequent area. This in itself is also in-keeping with the Chinese tradition: while we are used to seeing Chinese scrolls ‘unrolled’ for display, this is not how they were traditionally seen or intended to be experienced. Scrolls were kept for private contemplation rather than public display, and were ‘read’ in small sections. After one section of scroll was examined, it was then re-rolled to allow for the reading of the next section. Unlike the Classical tradition in Western art (as it manifested in painting after the Renaissance), the Chinese traditional painter did not work with single point perspective. This single perspective necessarily locks the image to an isolated point in time; in Chinese painting, multiple perspectives are shown in the same image, implying movement in time. Further progression in time is then of course also suggested by subsequent sections of the scroll. Both kinds of representations of time are present in Lu Qing’s pieces, if in a paired-down form, where time itself becomes the subject of the work.
This is one reading at least. While the squares in Lu Qing’s work could be read as ‘units’ of time, other interpretations are possible. We may look at the expanse of carefully rendered squares and be reminded of pixels on a screen, or of modern technology in some form - a nice tension between that ‘modern’ association and the traditional scroll format - but in Chinese culture the square also has other, much older resonances. The ancient Chinese believed in a square shaped universe, and ancient Chinese cities were correspondingly constructed around squares of increasing size, with the Emperor at the centre (look at the map of Beijing: what are now traffic clogged ring roads where once ancient city walls). The Chinese writing system is itself also based on the same structure, with each character fitting within a square format. In the case of Lu Qing’s work is it this association that perhaps has the most relevance, as rather than readable characters that would fill each ‘square’ on the scroll, we are presented instead with a kind of private or abstract language. Throughout Chinese history, artists have often stressed the essential similarity between painting and writing, with both originating from the same source, and students of Chinese are still encouraged to think of Chinese characters as individual ‘paintings’. In order to be good at calligraphy this is precisely how you need to think of a Chinese character: as an individual painting in its own right, with its own internal logic, structure and composition. It is with the same care that each section of Lu Qing’s painting appear to be treated, although in a way in which she has pushed the ‘abstraction’ of the written language to its logical conclusion, and created a piece that is in some sense both ‘written’ and painted at the same time.
I ask her if she has any upcoming exhibitions where I can see her pieces, but she says that she doesn’t have any planned. In fact, it emerges that the small catalogue she showed me was the last time she exhibited anything, 12 years ago. Of the 14 years that she’s been working on this project, only two have been seen by the public: she explains that she has no desire or need to exhibit her work, and actively doesn't want to, as it is too personal for public display. For her the process of making these monumental paintings is itself part of the artwork, and this too is of course both a personal and private action. I ask if there is anything meditative about the process of painting these works, and she says that there is. This ‘meditative’ quality of their production again adds another level to their meaning. In Lu Qing’s practise the appearance of the final work and the entire process of making it are united to make a coherent whole: the fact that the piece is made by an individual artist, that it requires such enormous dedication in terms of time and labour, that the work itself relates to ‘time’ and represents a year in the life of the creator - all these things are important in understanding the work. I mention some of these things to her, along with the fact that I enjoy how she can start with something so simple - a single painted square - to make something so complex. She laughs and says she has never thought of it like that. All these aspects that lead to such a rich and interesting artwork were all just ‘natural’ to her, and didn’t require thought. Again it is hard not to connect what she says with some aspects of the Chinese tradition, and I am reminded not only of the Chan Buddhist tradition in Chinese painting, where artists would work instinctively and ‘naturally’, but also of the ‘artist recluse’, who is a central figure in Chinese artistic culture. Retreating from the public or political sphere, these ‘recluses’ were lauded for their commitment to their art, and came to serve as the embodiment of the Confucian moral conscience of the State. The ‘artist hero’, who in times of political turmoil was viewed as a symbol of resistance to tyranny, is also a recurring figure in Chinese history. Pursuing either of these ideas would however have to wait for another day.
I thank her for her time, and unfortunately have to leave the calm of the studio to go back to work. In the taxi back to the centre of Beijing I think over our discussion, and of how perfectly Lu Qing’s work exemplifies the kind of approach I found inspiring in Chinese art when I was a student. In my own artwork I tried, in some small way, to combine something of this approach with the social and political engagement I found so impressive in Ai Weiwei. I thought to mention this to Lu Qing, how several years ago I had once seen a photograph of a work that reminded me of hers, and how interesting I had found it, but I didn’t. It is after all bad form to tell an artist that their work reminds you of another artist’s work, and after Lu Qing had been so generous with her time and so willing to answer questions, I was cautious about saying anything that might offend her. Later that night I decided to try and find that image, to look up who that artist had been, and after some time I finally found it. I look at the caption. It reads: Lu Qing.
Celyn Bricker is an artist based in Beijing. www.celynbricker.co.uk!
With special thanks to Linda Yi for her invitation to lunch and her help with translation. See her
work at: www.beautifullives.co