(PhD in contemporary art history, Paris Nanterre University, Professor and dean of the Fine Art College, National Taiwan University of Art)
“I am not setting abstract painting against figurative painting. A painting should be both abstract and figurative. Abstract to the extent that it is a flat surface, figurative to the extent that it is a representation of space.”
---- Nicolas de Staël
Artists tend to perceive the world through their own unique lens. This points to the difference between life and art: though art is rooted in life and can be realistic, it is nonetheless constructed by different types of “forms”. The century-long argument about abstract and figurative art has always been pointless. The abstract has never been a style, a school, a type of aesthetics, nor is it a doctrine or a set of rules. It cannot be clearly defined. It is, more often than not, a periodic method by which we perceive things. It is a mistake to separate the abstract from the figurative and to place them as opposites, or to question whether reality should be categorized as abstract or figurative, physical or spiritual, rational or emotional ---- these all lead to the fallacy of dualism and overlooking of the complex connection between the painting and the world it tries to represent.
The concept of “abstraction” quietly made its entry into the German-speaking countries in the early 20th century. It wasn’t meant to separate the physical world from its representation, but is an attempt to shine a light on the journey of the artist who observes and reimagines the world. Psychologist and philosopher Theodor Lipps was the first to coin the term “Einfühlung”, or “empathy” in English. He defines it as the “projection of the self by a sentient object”, as in when an artist is aware and observes the world and recreates such process through forms, colors and lines, the artist is actually projecting him/herself. Scholar Wilhelm Worringer said, in his 1908 thesis “Abstraktion und Einfühlung”, that “empathy” is defined as the “objective ownership of the self”, and that “abstraction” is rooted in the “elusive nature of the self”. The latter is known for its transcendental quality whereas the former leans closer to the figurative. Wassily Kandinsky, who was heavily influenced by Lipps' theory, also proposed “inner necessity” as the driving force behind artistic creation. He made the first clearly defined abstract painting in 1910, and called it a “non-objective” painting. It is worth noting that, though there is no discernible object in Wassily’s work, the painting itself is not detached from its function of representing the world. What it shows is the unique psychological path that the artist walked as he observed and felt the real world.
WU Tseng Jung’s watercolor is close to what’s conventionally considered as landscape. The artist seems to paint subjects in nature, ranging from a colorful university campus, the view from Guam, to the darker hues of bleak weather and the interplay of glimmering light over shadow. However, it is impossible to know for certain whether WU was painting actual landscape, people and still life, or that he was creating in a manner akin to Claude Monet, who once said, “The motif is secondary to me. What I try to recreate is that something that exists between me and the motif.” Along the same vein, Philippines artist Marina CRUZ has painted the parts of many clothes, which are heirlooms from her maternal family, in a highly realistic manner, rendering painstaking details such as creases and smudges. However, her figurative depiction has ultimately materialized the abstract connections between the clothes’ makers and those who wear them.
The works of SHI Jin-hua, on the other hand, have always exemplified the idea of “the body as mediator”: the body is both physical and spiritual. The artist’s body serves as the medium between his spirit and the outside world, the pencil an extension of his body, and the residual “artwork” is the trace of his actions. The large palettes of ink left after his performance art and ritualistic penance known as “Pencil Walker” and the countless wavy pencil lines in “A 100km Walk” are all considered “abstract” at first glance. However, they are actually the ensemble of traces behind specific actions. Since he started the “Pen Walking” series in 1994, SHI has been displaying the intersubjectivity with physical objects through empathy: as a pencil nears the end of its life, the artist who wields it completes his creation. Both his latest works, “Sumeru Mountain” and “Pen Walking”, appear to be mountainscapes. On a deeper level, they present the journey in which the artist and his pencils make their way up the sacred Buddhist Mountain. The remaining pencil shavings bear witness to the attrition along the way, and the winding lines mark the path to spiritual enlightenment.
In fact, the prominence of materialism in the 20th century has made the dialectics of the abstract and the figurative even more complex: when Picasso placed a real canvas on top of his Cubist painting, when Vladimir Tatlin abandoned the path of mimicking the world with objects and instead turned his focus on the objects themselves, when the function of art included both representation and presentation, the dialectics around the abstract and the figurative entered a new era. Just like Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said, “It is true and uncontradictory that no grape was ever what it is in the most figurative painting and that no painting, no matter how abstract, can get away from Being, that even Caravaggio's grape is the grape itself. This precession of what is upon what one sees and makes seen, of what one sees and makes seen upon what is—this is vision itself.”
SHI Jinsong’s “Qian Chuang Yuan #15” appears to be an abstract sculpture on the surface. It is, in reality, a ready-made aidé sculpted from a wreckage of his previous art studio. His monochromatic abstract paintings are made by a mixture of paint and dust collected from locations with special significance. The unusual method rooted in “materialism” speaks volumes about his obsession with physical objects. His interest in the ruins and wreckage, on the other hand, reveals his pursuit of uncertainty, rooted in the disbelief of materialism. Similarly, the photography work of abstract painter QIN Yifeng represents another form of obsession with material. His latest work is inspired by his collection of Ming Dynasty furniture and their unique materiality, which ended up being the subject of representation. The method by which QIN represents these objects are quite unconventional: despite applying a high level of technical control over the photographic process, the resulting images can be hardly considered “photos”. They resemble minimalist film negatives in their tone and depth, and are all named after the time, date and weather condition of photographing. These photos, in their near-total darkness, are deeply alluring as they render a thinner, fuzzier and almost-disappeared version of reality. They accentuate the ghost-like nature of all objects and offer another perspective through which the viewers could observe and interpret matters. The ceramic pieces of Indonesian artist Albert Yonathan SETYAWAN form their own language that oozes religious mystique and a sense of simplicity akin to ancient artifacts. The form of those pieces is not so much the result of imitation but rather of the process that reduces real-world objects into symbols. The symbols are detached from real objects. They grow in number and expand in space according to a certain pattern. The obscure nature of their meaning generates a sense of abstraction and alienation.
The exhibition’s title “Figurative Abstraction” seems like a paradox. However, if the artists continue to imitate the ultimate interpretation offered by the world, and if such interpretation is a constantly shifting experience, and that expressing towards the world happens to be their never-ending quest, then the abstract and figurative elements of artworks are not in opposition, instead, they complement each other. Regardless of how they are defined, these elements together construct the experience through which artists deal with reality. It is positive yet negative, real and imaginary, materialist and spiritual, personal and universal.