Rao FU’s paintings are difficult to dissect. They possess an irresistible, mysterious charm, magnetizing our eyes and minds like a black hole. Looking directly at it, we see the sacred solemnity of European classical paintings as well as the free flow of individual will that is inherent in contemporary art. The seemingly contradictory values intertwine and collide. In the composition of faraway landscape often seen in Rao FU’s paintings, there is a certain kind of yearning for the pure “at rest” state of the Garden of Eden, reminiscent of the background of 17th-century Baroque paintings. But at the same time, we are also treated to the subtle dynamic and unyielding view of life in the cosmos, reminding us of the landscape paintings of the Yuan and Song dynasties in China, such as the nature and mountains in Guo Xi’s Early Spring, in which the “constant movement” is alive and enigmatic. The relationship between the background and the subject matter, like a debate between self and infinity, or life and destiny, is equally intriguing.
The aura and style of Rao FU’s works convey an inexplicable unease and anxiety that is often found in Kafka’s novels. It suggests that perhaps this is the very nature of fear in life, and that for some unknown reason, the abyss will inevitably continue to be present in the world. With no way or reason to resolve it, people are destined to confront this mysterious force and are fated to fail because of it. Simultaneously, we can see the subjects Rao FU is used to depicting are often everyday scenes in between reality and fiction with a surreal allegorical meaning. He is especially fascinated with people/ghosts, nature/unpredictability, transience/accident, violence/others, individuals/groups, and apocalypse/salvation. Moreover, these contradictory values are directly and provocatively presented in the same scene, either to remind and question the reality, but not intended to point to a final answer.
As such, the position of the creator becomes a manifestation of the spirit of confrontation, because one can never fully trust all the known answers to reality. We can only come to realize that the world we face is a mysterious time and space of constant change, and we must keep moving in a state of doubt and objective questioning. Paintings, therefore, are like the mysterious nature of the world. The hidden allegorical meanings are more than the representations of the visible image we see. The characters and objects placed on the stage are only necessary props for telling a tragic story. Ultimately, they may not be the real focus of the narrative.
Although the character of symbolism and allegory is strong, perhaps the answer Rao FU intends to find is not only the possibility of symbolic discourse, but also the perfect composition of the “scene”—a saturated state where all tensions and contradictions in life can be accommodated and embodied together. It’s where the inevitable violence and sanctity of life can coexist harmoniously in an eternal yearning of permanence. The final capture of such scene composition is akin to expecting the birth of a perfect tragedy. The subjective inevitability and unpredictability are parallels to the existence of each character and object in the picture, natural and appropriate, but without any absolute inevitability that it must be so. Like the rise and fall of all life and the order of the universe, it is determined to exist without cause or reason. Perhaps, this individual confrontation and unyielding will, as well as the persistent expectation of the ultimate manifestation of the perfect “composition”, can also be regarded as an expression of Rao FU’s view on art/life.
Such a complete construction of the overall intention is like the relationship between drama and mythology. Characters and props play the key objects of symbols, while the creator uses the existence of such symbols to define the thinking distance between self and reality. At the same time, the invisible universe behind the myth is somehow reflected. This subtly reveals a sense of tragedy that can’t be defeated by fate. As a result, individual life must be respected and cherished, through which the strength of one’s will to act against tragedy is created.
The recognition and acceptance of the existence of tragedy and, therefore, the insistence of the individual will to confront it, are the core challenges faced by many artists from the Enlightenment to this day. For instance, the characters in Dostoevsky’s novels often perform tragic and heroic acts of causeless self-destruction. Like the ultimate confrontation of a desperate man who, after seeing the inevitable existence of the tragedy as a while, chooses to actively claim and insist on the meaning of individual life. Even though he is fully aware that such action will not change the overall framework of the tragedy, but still chooses to make a self-fulfilling personal tragedy to make an unyielding fight against fate.
Bakhtin once proposed the idea of “polyphony” to explain Dostoevsky’s philosophy of life. When we are faced with the inescapable tragic relationship between such a huge and single predestined whole and a relatively weak, divergent individual existence, Dostoevsky allows these diverse voices to exist separately yet coexist harmoniously in a single massively overwhelming structure, producing contradictory but independent “polyphony” to resolve and answer the long-standing chains of despair in his mind.
Bakhtin writes: “A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky’s novels. What unfolds in his works is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event.” 1
The characters and objects symbolized in Rao FU’s paintings indeed have the characteristics of “a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event.” Their apparently self-destructive and glorious attitudes are precisely a willful confrontation against the overall tragic destiny—it’s a martyrdom-like spirit that perseveres to the end, even knowing that it is bound to fail.
Similarly, the visual effect of cavalier perspective can be seen in many of FU’s paintings. This is reminiscent of the “non-one-point perspective” in traditional Chinese landscape paintings, thus giving way to Rao FU’s creation of a ghostly atmosphere of surrealism. To a certain extent, the “multiple realities” created by the use of multiple vanishing points resembles the parallel co-existence of time and space, mirroring Bakhtin’s view of “polyphony.”
The tragic sense that Rao FU lets the individuals face the universe alone does not imply an attitude of pessimism and abandonment. Rather, it may be closer to the German Romantic Tradition, which emphasizes the solitary spirit of a person who enters the forest alone seeking self-healing and redemption in absolute loneliness. This attitude of faith in dialogue with one’s soul and the search for unknowable forces that can give inner enlightenment is, as Romanticism describes it, “Waldeinsamkeit” (solitude in the forest)—the kind of chivalry that used to carry a sense of mission and pathos!
It is a solitary journey with passion and poetry that starts from oneself and hopes to directly face the real-life universe. The destination is the ideal place where self-actualization and material-self finally become one. This demonstrates how a modern person can look at the present civilization and past history. And as of this moment, that’s how I see Rao FU’s paintings.
- M.M. Bakhtin: Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Joint Publishing, 1988 edition, p. 29
