(1)

When Chang Qing went back Sichuan, he left a pile of photographs to me, which include the study drawings in school, his typical paintings of still life, portraits work finished in recent years, and most recent on-paper works that I have never seen. There is also a letter among the photos, which represents what he was sincerely thinking about in the bottom of his heart when he hurried to leave. In the letter, he talked about the sentiment to life in his middle age and his complex mood on his way back to Sichuan to look in his terminally sick father. He also said in his letter that due to these changes, he felt steadier and calmer in his mood, and understood the unperturbed status of fatalism. “It is a sort of escape.”

ESCAPE, a word of astonishment, seems to flash in the glimmering paintings of Chang Qing, and connect his works of wide span together. On the surface, the feeling of escape is quite different from the elaboration of his still life works. However, when we look into the ever person, the complex status of his life and arts, and the several miraculous peaks in his career, when we further evaluate it as an ideology of younger generation, we will agree on his honest confession of escape. Formerly, Chang Qing’s works always lead us to a subtle observation on the past years. Now that they turned to express the pursuit of fate and the desire of escape related to such pursuit, and drew a particular curve of soul for the generation, the starting point of which is the sensitive heart of a young man and also the endless chase for confused youth and elapsing time.

(2)

Almost all the persons know Chang Qing can not forget his painting, Bowl, which was drawn in 1987 when he was a junior student in college. The refine texture of the ceramic bowl had moved many people, and thereafter, promoted the development of Chinese still life painting style with delicate skills. Moreover, the painting represents loneliness by suspending the objective to the corner of the picture, the implication of the location on the edge of the table, and the feeling of history and change hinted by the kerf on the bowl. All of these turned on the most moving leaf of still life that is far ahead of most similar paintings.

The generation of Chang Qings has grown in the dynamic changes of 85 Wave. On one hand, the initial stage of reform and opening-up of the country brought extraordinary energy, which rapidly changed the society; on the other hand, the experience spirit of 85 Wave represented increasing trend of anti-painting. Both had cornered part of young people, especially the students in fine art colleges, into a dilemma, making them oscillated. Therefore, unlike the pioneers in the 85 Wave, they changed to some other direction. They escape from the realistic life and from the city of reality to the past in the anti-clockwise direction with traditional skills and tools with trails of time. Escape is relative to hiding. Chang Qing has hidden in a sealed space, in “other where”, and in a place where he does not exist. He paints the tools and articles of the past, hides himself in the depth of the lingering glimmering, refining the loneliness and beauties that belong to the past time.

During a long period of time, Chang Qing has been indulged in this kind of themes. The old tools and articles he painted, including the inactive or running clock, ceramic bowl with kerf, old wind fan, old camera, old newspaper, old eye glasses, fresh fruit or dry fruit, were all related to time. He skillfully employed various methods to make the articles covered with dusts, to make alive waterlike spread moonlight, to lighten the past elegance with yellowish light. He was obsessed to describe the mystery trace of the “people” and explain the fable of the absent with the word of the property. The time changed to be the specific articles here; while the aftertaste and falling of the splendid past constantly reminds people of their secrete mood and sentiment to life. Chang Qing almost reached a point that classic still life can not reach, and meanwhile, let his own escape falling into a deep well of allegoric art.

(3)

In the middle 1980s, Chang Qing escaped from the open space to the secrete corner and exiled himself to the Other Where he does not exist. He is like an old camera, shooting with slow motion a period of time one-century before or the forgotten time by the century in an underexposure darkroom. The dispersed light with gloom flirtation silently appeared at the wake of the memories. As images, the articles had been existing in the darkness and incarceration for a long time. Now they are suddenly lighted by the unnamed light of life and the meaning of Escape, which not only light these articles, but also light the ignorance itself.

Since the first biennial exhibition 1996 in Shanghai, Chang Qing has begun to pay attention to the people around. He seemed to wake up by the hint of ignorance, and began to return from the deep well to the reality, from the space full of still life he elaborated to the life around. He painted many various people, making them quietly fading in the trail of water wash to represent the helplessness that not willing to give up. The portrait works display an abnormal story-like style, just as his still life works which are full of the trails of the absent. The figure in the portrait seems to fail to wake up in the vacant just as if at the ever moment he or she was lightened. In the series of double-figure paintings Chang Qing recently finished, the warm yellowish light gave the sexual hint. The diseased flirtation flare and the ambiguous atmosphere of lovers, as if to be activated by a rude intruder, became utmost jiggly and tangly. The fancy confusion and perplexing is lightened by the faint glimmer.

Chang Qing failed to change this incarcerate place. But he became moving. His brush, his eyes and his paintings became flowing. His sense of reality also became flowing with the gleam. He desired to withdraw the distance with literature implication, with symbolism, and with the photo-like halation. On one hand, it is the elaborated implication that exposed him of the extramundane sense of life; on the other hand, the subtle drawing and the indecent preference that may brought about herewith made him feel disgusting and helpless. So he desired to escape from this fleeing place to “some other where”.

At this stage, Chang Qing again shows his delicacy of drawing. In addition to this, he also shows the acumen of capturing and observation. The sentiment to the elapsing splendid time became nostalgia and confrontation of life. The nostalgia made him more sentimental, while confrontation made the sentiment to be more fearless and honest. As if we are peeking the secrete space of the lovers through thick ground glass: pale faces, shaking hand, cosmetic flavor… The figures are more like shadows with horrified and helpless eye expression. Such eye expression is more helpless than the teary eye expression of Seng Zhong written by JILIKE, with vagueness of fish eyes. It seems to us that we are “seeing” these people, instead, we are feeling about the incoming stories due to the vague warm yellowish tone. The vague sense of experience distracts us from everything before we experienced the vagueness itself. Chang Qing had lightened our incarcerated heart with dusty exquisite articles. Now he made us to be the intruders, experiencing the special and amazing imagination with the vague figures.

(4)

The “moving” Chang Qing continued with his escape. Just as his word in the letter: “ May be due to the middle age, my understanding to life and art and many other things became more profound. And my mood became steadier and calmer, which in turn made my works more relax. Since I witnessed the painful struggle made by the man who gave me the life in Chengdu, I began to sentimentally attach the people and things around me and to cherish the temperature inside my body.” “Have you found that I am more fond of doodling than other people, which resulted from my nature of activity. What I love is that my sensibility break away from my rational knowledge, a sense of escape.” It is the life struggle of the man who gave his life and the frequent journey between Hangzhou and Chengdu that made him closely observe the concept of This Time and Other Where, Life and Death. Such experience also brought to him the desire of release and the desire of honesty for fate. Then Chang Qing tried to describe all these in his paintings. So he goes from the antique store to the Kara OK  entertainment next door, and finally to the street cross with the feeling of real “escape”.

Recently, Chang Qing worked out many paintings, recording the fragment of life and directly describing the life of the mass. The sketches are so vivid that reminds me that in mid 80s when Chang Qing is a junior college student, his sketches had drawn my attention already. Now when he returned to the life around after over ten years’ escape, his observation is still so acute. The difference is that the flirting expression and casual doodling are added in his painting. The real spaces including the series of newborn, Kara Bar, and Friday Afternoon, etc. all have scenery statement and confronting frankness. The painting named Aran and I in the water seems to be a drawing diary or observation and self-examination from constantly changed directions. Such description connected a rich and changeable phenomenon from different angles in different time span. Instead of “looking” at these sketches, we are feeling the changing process of life by the overlap and incontinuous fragment. Or, the sketches themselves are forming some coming fate, trying to compose the observation to things and life with numerous glimpses.

Chang Qing seems to return from a remote port. He kept escaping and seeking for the “other where”, but unexpectedly returned his own circumstance. His path turned around from the incarcerated space of exile to the retrospect to the life, and eventually to the realistic life. The “Other Where” is just around us in the place where we live. The meaning of escape does not lie in the “hiding”, but the “escape” itself and the drive making the life always on the way. It is “escape” that unveiled Chang Qing of the delicacy and emblem of the incarcerated space and made him expose the confusion and ambiguity among the mass. Now Chang Qing is at the cross of road. “His road is just under his foot.”

Maybe the meaning of life lies in the “escape”.   

Xu Jiang
Beijing Hotel
2001.12.

Directness

Chang Qing asked me to write critique on him two years ago, but I said， “ what I am focusing on is the advance guard. If I commented on you, my identity would be blurred. ” Chang Qing was in a loud voice “No, you are focusing on other things instead of art itself. Take a picture for example, on which there is a pile of broken glass and a high-heeled shoe, you must be very interested in it. And you would think ‘Someone is jumping from the top! Is it a murder or suicide?  For the sake of money or love?’ Then you would continue thinking ‘ The market economy makes people weaker and the modern high buildings have become an up-to-date execution ground etc.’ you would also define it with some concepts or –isms. That picture is my production when I was a sophomore. But I gave it up soon because I found such design is too theatrical. After all life is not in the theater and stimulators, which are abnormal and infrequent. I think good art should be natural. In fact I have a sense of trepidation when seeing those scenes. For instance a cat run over by an automobile, passing automobiles still run over it and make it gory. Maybe some artists would join and think this is a fantastic theme. But I would bypass it.” He even didn’t give me any chances of interruptions and 5% of his words were in a bit stammer. He was not only using the mouth to say it but also hand, neck, brows, eyes and muscles nearby his lips and nose. All this smashed me into pieces just like the gory cat.

A False Woman

There is a photograph of the whole family in Chang Qing’s home taken in 60’s. In the photo there are mother, two sons and one “daughter”. This only girl was three years old, wearing braids and a skirt, with a delicate face but she pursed her lips up showing the angry. This girl was the second child of the family, named Chang Qing, who is a famous false girl. Chang Qing’s mother was eager to have a daughter but all her children are boys. Chang Qing has the prettiest face among the three so she dressed him as a girl to fulfill her dream. But such way of doing mixed his gender up and affected his life even life long.

Chang Qing resisted such dressing in childhood. He broke the plaits up, tore the skirt and photos. But mother always thought plaits and skirts were very beautiful. And everyday adults teased him. Chang Qing just raised his skirt to show the inside (without underwear) to tell all the truth. In order to show he is a male, Chang Qing was the first to fall in love in middle school. He had rasping voice, no long hair. Nevertheless beauties drawn by Chang Qing are always wearing skirts or long gowns. There is not any flirtation in posture or mien. His model drawing is excellent without nudity.

Bad Student

Chang Qing was accepted by the middle school attached to Si Chuan Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 15. The school applied for the Education Department to dismiss him for all together eight times. One cause is that he got drunk and made troubles. The other one is that he was overweening, claiming only Rembrandt and Michelangelo know arts. The school thought all his faults couldn’t be forgiven. When he recalls it, he insists that it was not true. But at that time all the people thought only Chang Qing could say so.

The application reports for dismissing Chang Qing were always turned down because the head of the Education Department was Chang Qing’s neighbor and thought this false girl was so innocent that he would not become so overweening. In 1984, the Central Academy of Fine Arts admitted Chang Qing, but the institute dismissed him according to the reports provided by Si Chuan Academy of Fine Arts. This false woman made bold to raise his skirt and then he was cost a lot due to his boldness. Fortunately Chang Qing is persistent in arts, otherwise Chang Qing, the son of a righty would have never entered into this field.

Arduous Endeavors

In 1985 Chang Qing was accepted by Oil Painting of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. The academy’s tradition is to sketch by pencils. But Chang Qing thought such tradition is as opinionated as to let boys in skirts. He just wanted to break this tradition and used pens, ball pens and brush pens. Chang Qing likes drawing diaries. He once drew “nausea” by brush pen to describe that once students in the Oil Painting Department had the nausea on the way to sketch. The forming is quite funny. So classmates all strived to let him draw portraits for them. He drew many cartoons of his wife. He drew the pretty girls into the forming of various grimaces, some like a spirit, some like a demon and others like a witch. All were very ugly and gloomy.

During the fastigium of Chinese advance guard arts, Chang Qing drew a series of transformed figures in small size. The image and brushwork was so strange that he was regarded as an advance guard. In 1987 the head of Education Administration Department in Zhe Jiang Arts Academy saw an unruly transformation painting by Chang Qing in the students’ studio. At that time Chang Qing was studying the brushwork of a modern Japanese painter. Such brushwork was regarded bad as it was against academism. The next day the dean distributed a guy to take a photo and expose it. Mr. Zhang Ziyi told Chang Qing as soon as he got the news and let him draw a true-life sketch overnight. The next day when the dean came to the studio he found a nice traditional sketch drawn by Chang Qing. This is the only sketch that Chang Qing drawn by pencil.

On the First Chinese Oil Painting Show in 1987, Chang Qing’s product was a picture of a porcelain step painted on a red traditional Chinese table. His teacher warned that a still life could never be a piece of great work. But such a conclusion just aroused his rebelling spirit. He thought it was strange that nobody draw it and what made him feel more strange is that his painting attracted so much attention. Even later such a painting he drew by chance was regarded as his style. The former dean pointed his painting with his stick and said to the students of Oil Painting Department “ What is art? THIS IS!” After that many people followed this style and an unorganized Porcelain Step Faction came into being and soon dominated the market. Furthermore price of pictures of this style is high. People said Chang Qing led the Chinese Oil painters to be well off.

Advance Guard in Life

Chang Qing is not an advance guard artist but a piece of advanced guard work. He yearns towards artistic life and thinks only people who know life can know arts well. And some artists are not clear about this point.

Years ago Fang Lijun and other people often went to Hang Zhou, bareheaded. They visited Chang Qing, who led the Chinese Oil painters to be well off. They chatted and played together, while never talking about art. Even when they were bragging, their topics were confined to common things, jokes.

In the group Chang Qing would never let you feel tired. In his mind there were no prohibited topics. He would immediately cover it up with a skirt when he unconsciously said any sensitive topics. Some artists’ works are explicit while the artists themselves are implicit; some artists’ works are classic while they themselves are modern. Chang Qing is definitely the latter. In today’s Chinese arts, imitations are dominant. But Chang Qing should be allowed to grow up freely. We shouldn’t force him to wear a skirt. Likewise we needn’t criticize Chang Qing, who is used to wear a skirt in arts.

People’s value orientation is often contradictory, for instance in central Africa some countries have prohibited women to wear trousers, as they look sexual. As expected AIDS spread apace when the ban was lifted. Three thousand years ago the greatest prize Emperor in Zhou Dynasty gave to his servants was a vermeil skirt. In today’s world culture development is always along with violence. Should human being all dress in skirts?

True-life Style

True-lifes drawn by Chang Qing contains old styled dressers, chairs, ovens, luggage etc. The pictures all look very gloomy, with yellow leaves scattered all around. Models in his pictures are gloomy, furniture old and the setting bleak. For Chang Qing such style is to show his rebellious spirit in arts. But for some senior rich people this style happens to remind them of their family history and first love. Chang Qing frequently draws the period of dressing traditional skirts in Chinese Cultural History, which is contradictory to his age and life style.

Chang Qing’s porcelain step and beauty are natural, vivid, with the sense of oil painting. He admires Velazquez very much; whose style is casual but just right. Chang Qing thinks there is nobody can compete with Velazquez in China. These words implicate that he intends to exceed Velazquez someday.

In 1999 Chang Qing drew a half-length of two young ladies. The model of the full-face woman is an actress from Hang Zhou Yue Shaoxing Opera Troupe. The side-face woman is from Zhe Jiang Dancing and Singing Troupe. With accompany of the deans, Chang Qing selected his models very carefully. Maybe the models are not very beautiful but photogenic. Then he led them to a prearranged house and let them dress in skirts. They posed and took many 135 colored photos. Each forming has a subtle difference so after developing he found the good parts from those photos and organized into one.  After seeing the picture, what impressed you most is the light surrounding the two characters. The author drew the faces for almost 20 times, with cold color and warm color in turns. So you can see the subtle differences in color. For the last several times the author used middle color.

Art View

Chang Qing thinks modern media support speculation in arts. A film of 90 minutes can describe an artist’s history completely. So many painters speculate. Some cater to politics taste, some to foreigners, others to theorists. Chang Qing supposes that he is also an opportunist but his inclination is different from others.

He supposes contemporary arts can easily bring people successes. Nowadays the communication between east and west is not very free, painters can imitate or slightly alter some western renowned artists and then launch a painting show or release a picture album. But only imitation is of no value in arts. Chang Qing often criticized contemporary arts before me. His aim is not only to expand my view but also to remind me that criticism should be fair to all kinds of tendencies in arts. I think years later there will be a third group in arts, that is Green Party. He worries about some advance guards and he also worries about himself. He is very curious and thinks fashion is hard to resist. So he wants to keep the distance from advance guards so as to get more freedom to do what he wants to do. Then what does he want to do? What he wants to do is to make up western artists’ shortcomings and better his own paintings. But at last he asked me in a baffling voice “Arts all appears to be morbid. Are my paintings too healthy?”

Ample time in future

Life experience is a method to life aim. Such successes usually can bring material successes to people. So the method is frequently changed to the ultimate aim and confines one to death. Chang Qing has achieved successes in commerce, but can he be a great artist? I think he should first expel the material temptations from his heart and this will be a big obstacle to him.

I like painting, expressing and independent views even when I was a child. Academism changed my former wish and dreams. My talents were divided, reorganized and packaged. I once analyzed all the things about painting like light, color, space, texture, material, art history and functions etc. Drawing is sometimes a skill which I use to make money, sometimes is science. We analyze others, ourselves and meanwhile others are analyzing us. All these are sensible but tedious. Long period of poor business made me rebel and escape from the small place. And finally had a long leave for both my body and my heart with a good excuse. I also have a philistine reason to catch my flying mind and then I found I’m writing the arts history.

— Chang Qing