版画的终结：关于王能涛的“新宣传画”

                                                         段 君

Ⅰ

清代以前的版画，一直为文学和宗教所规定。它只被视作一种手段，关于它自身的目的性，从来不曾明确。有研究者一度倡导要将“中国版画史”改为“中国插图史”，更是在无意中加剧了版画的从属性和附庸地位。传统版画，作为边缘艺术种类，地位卑微，身份不明，难入正史。20世纪以来，版画竟前所未有地焕发青春，在抗战前后和建国初期两度“繁荣”。但实际情况显而易见：这两个时期的版画依然停留在“工具论”层面。在国家意识形态眼中，版画的唯一功用就是唯唯诺诺地宣传，而且从不允许思考和异议。

国门再度敞开之后，随着机械复制和数码复制时代的降临，传统版画的复制优势一下子彻底崩解，并因此在意识形态怀中失宠：意识形态需要更为“新进”、更为工业化、规模化的新艺术种类。同时，观念老化的问题也一直困扰着版画队伍，版画两面为难，遂在官方艺术和先锋艺术的双重冷遇中摇摇欲坠，终结之势已不可避免。具有当代意识和独立品格的新型版画，在王能涛的“新宣传画”出现之前，并不多见。徐冰1980年代末影响巨大的版画《析世鉴》，算是其中最有价值的，它凭借其巨大的破坏性，成为终结旧式版画道路上的一块重要里程碑。

天书的杀伤性在此不必赘述，但严格地说，天书还只是发出了末日的预告，它还没有从源头处击中旧式版画的要害。《析世鉴》中的伪字将木刻引入文字学领域，排除了版画以视觉语言反抗文字统治的可能性，从而将版画带入纯粹逻辑推理的另一条死胡同，也就没有正面回应版画作为文字附庸的问题；加之伪书过度的设计因素和精英指向，也不可能对本根植于民间的书写系统起到太大作用，最后被时间证明还是一种自我封闭的观念游戏。王能涛自新世纪以来绘制的一系列“新宣传画”，针对版画所面临的最根本问题，从文字和图像两方面入手，推翻了压在版画身上的两座大山——文字、宗教，义无反顾地把版画引入新的问题情境当中，以面对我们这个时代更为关键的课题。传统版画就此终结，并重新开启了通往独立思考的大门。

 Ⅱ

将王能涛的画称之为“新宣传画”，首先必须解决两个疑问：1、何谓“新”？2、究竟要宣传什么？而只有先解答了第二个疑问，才可以断定为何王能涛的宣传画“新”。“宣传”一词在集权主义时代曾一度充满邪恶色彩，其功用在于蛊惑人心，使人失去独立判断和分辨能力，以让某种不可告人的目的得逞。王能涛的版画先天具有一种反宣传意识：它要求版画不再为包括文学、宗教、商业、权力等在内的其他意识形态作无独立人格的效力，而是主动下放为一种充满个人自由的声音表达。艺术一旦具有了自我意识，它就会自行了断过去。

“新”，乃是相对于“旧”而言，它既有沿袭亦有僭越，但最重要的是，它代表以前从未有过的东西。王能涛要宣传正是一种“新乌托邦主义”，这种新主义是对永无兑现希望的乌托邦奢望和旧理想主义的超越。“新乌托邦主义”是对未来幸福的承诺。不难发现，“新宣传画”中的所有标语口号，都是王能涛个人关于新乌托邦的幻想，这种幻想逾越了文革时期虚伪、空泛，并且必然最终枯萎的伪乌托邦空想。种种迹象表明：当前的社会不是在促进，反而是在日益阻止任何形态的乌托邦之实现。

标语口号作为最直接的心声传达，不是用教条方式喊出来的——空喊从来都缺乏力量，它必须通过图像的正反例证。王能涛对官方虚伪话语的消解，正是反其道而行之，先在画面上突出标语口号点题式的主导地位，尔后以图像破之，即暗示话语与图像在逻辑上的悖谬性，从而将伪乌托邦话语打入冷宫，取而代之的是王能涛建基于普遍主义之上的世界理想。同时，建国以来那种无所畏惧的积极奋斗态度，被王能涛转换性地承接过来，遂在一大片对集体主义的怀疑抨击当中，基于他个人的善良天性及后天修得的豁达心境，看到了共产主义在建设民族国家时所制造的血迹之外，还存在着它值得珍视和怜悯的一面：即相对于弱肉强食的资本时代，社会主义家庭式的想象还包含着一丝人情温暖，它驱除的是对无家可归的莫名恐惧。在王能涛“新宣传画”中的人物肖像中，看不见丝毫的恐惧或惊慌，只有从眼神和嘴角流露出来的决心和坚毅。

Ⅲ

早在之前的《流年日志》系列中，王能涛就已宣告“新乌托邦主义”的出场。这种新乌托邦幻想不是对历史苦难的遗忘，而是一种更高层面的超越：只有超越才能更好地对待苦难。“新宣传画”所蕴含的积极心态，试图抹去种种过虑：活在往日的仇恨和阴霾中，只会将自己永远地困在牢笼里。而且，当前的国家和人民需要在百年来的屈辱受尽后重塑自信，以便再次上路。“新宣传画”打算在其间发挥作用。鲁迅当年为木刻在现代中国的兴盛而殚精竭虑，一是因为木刻印于纸上，行远及众、顷刻能办；另一个原因就是由于木刻与民族国家的命运紧密相连。“新宣传画”业已显示出朝这个方向努力的迹象和效果。但王能涛需要时刻警惕的是，在何时何地，他应当驻足回望过去，“新宣传画”才可以不至于被误解为缺乏反思的深度因素，即对历史的盲目过滤。

鲁迅在1930年代就已认识到，木刻绝非冢中枯骨换了新装，而是艺术家与社会大众内心的一致要求。王能涛观察到这一点，没有在版画的语言形式探索上作更多无谓的停留。当然，较之《流年日志》，“新宣传画”已明显舍弃了画面中一些多余的因素，并与波普的流俗拉开距离。颜色亦由灰变亮，画中的每一根线都在大片的纯色背景当中熠熠生辉，而且精致洁净。独立的线条除了造型职能，更具备暗示人物情绪的准确性。王能涛的画更注重直观，他对概念没有太大的兴趣，也没有在画幅之中准备那么多的表达内容：这样会妨碍他对乌托邦幻想的专注。而他的摧毁性就在于以单纯而集中的图像，佐以大画幅凝聚起的巨大视觉冲击力，通过文字和图像时而相称、时而悖谬的多重关系之呈现，把版画从附庸玩物和观念游戏的尴尬困境中解救出来，开启了版画的另一种当代性。

陈寅恪曾言：一时代之学术，必有其新材料与新问题。话虽简单，却是“当代性”的最佳注脚：王能涛的“新宣传画”不仅朝向未来，更直面当下。其艺术多年以来致力于促进社会中的“个体”朝“公民”身份转化。在古典主义名目之下的“个体”，怀疑所谓的社会正义、公共责任和普遍道德；而具备当代性的“公民”概念，则抛弃了狭隘的“个体”定位，不为私利满足，更是为寻求在民族国家整体强盛之下的个人幸福。

所以，在王能涛的“新宣传画”那里，除了国家领袖像，他本人的家庭成员留影，开始扮演越来越重要的角色。这些不管是在早期那一特定时代的留影，还是最新近记录的幸福时光，除了鲜明的个人特征，也理所当然地染有相应的时代气息。王能涛的能力就在于恰当地将这两种因素揉和成一个具有永恒性质的整体，他的版画几乎全是对形象转瞬即逝的珍贵定格。不同于其他当代作品也常用到的家族资源，王能涛的图像最清晰地展现了一个某人确实诞生于其中的结构性社会景象，而不是那种过于虚幻的家庭想象。

                             Ⅳ

中国版画自诞生之初就与传统的家谱修撰印制有关，在这些族谱中，记载有祖辈源起、迁徙、分宗等信息。王能涛则怀有一整套更大的“家庭→家族→国族→世界”观念。这种世界主义观念，避免了王能涛的艺术重蹈覆辙，再度陷入东方主义泥潭。早在1990年代后期，王能涛就放弃了先前发泄式的表现主义画风，以及表现落后社会主义国家急剧转型期间的青少年变异题材。尽管如此，表现主义情绪在“新宣传画”中还是有所残留，它使得王能涛作品中看似欣悦的人物肖像背后，隐匿着一丝关于新时代与新型民族国家的忧虑。

王能涛显然有充足的能力来把握由大心境必然带来的大题材，他的作品从来都必须以系列的方式来展示和理解。单独一幅画虽不会彻底失势，但会缺乏多幅画作在更大规模的展览陈述时所具有的整体意义。这种联合是王能涛提供给观众理解现实社会的一种方式，它带有新理想主义典型的浪漫情结。浪漫需要想象，以想象的方式来把握作品，曾被视为最不可靠的下下策，但在王能涛这里，想象恰恰是必须的步骤，因为“新宣传画”具有谜语的气质，这种谜语虽不是“新乌托邦主义”日后实施的明确方案，却是解决民族未来问题的关键所在。

谜一般的“新宣传画”，通常只对两种人起效：对艺术一无所知的人和对艺术无所不知的人。赋予“新宣传画”谜语特质的不是其他什么，正是历史：历史也在等待有朝一日谜的破解。

在王能涛的全部作品中，始终有两种气质聚而不散，除了忧郁，就是开朗。忧郁使他的作品获得了心理上的纵深度，开朗则使艺术家本人在炎凉世态前心怀坦荡，以保持艺术的纯粹性。这两种气质，王能涛其实更看重后者。因为他知道，他的画是一种疗救，在伪善的国家话语系统和这一人心冰冷的时代，有心人一定会在其中寻求到慰藉和震动。这不是一种政治行为，而是那种道“在蝼蚁”、“在稊稗”、“在瓦壁”、“在屎溺”，人人皆可得道的庄禅启示方式。版画虽然终结了，但其余所有的一切都将更好地保存下去。人在爱中生活，并将幸福。

The Utmost Limits of Printmaking: About Wang Nengtao’s New Propaganda Posters

By Duan Jun

Translated by Jeff Crosby

I

Pre-Qing Dynasty woodblock printing had always been regulated by literature and religion. It was seen as merely a means for something. We have never been clear about its own ends. Some researchers have proposed changing the terminology from ‘Chinese printing history’ to ‘Chinese illustration history’, which only adds to its subordinate and subservient position. Traditional printing is a marginalized type of art with a low position and unclear identity that has had difficulty gaining recognition in official history. In the twentieth century, printing found a hitherto unknown vitality, and ‘prospered’ in the years surrounding the Second World War and the early stages of the People’s Republic. But the true situation is obvious – in these two periods, printing was stuck on the realm of ‘tools’. In the eyes of the national ideology, the only use for printing was to obediently promote ideas, and was never allowed to ponder or voice dissent.

When the nation’s gates reopened, the reproductive advantages of woodblocks collapsed with the arrival of machine reproduction, and printing lost favor in the eyes of ideology. Ideology required a more advanced industrialized and scaled art form. Meanwhile, the aging of concepts was an issue that befuddled printmakers. Printmaking was facing trouble on two fronts, and teetered between the cold receptions of palace art and avant-garde art. The end was unavoidable. New forms of printing with contemporary consciousness and independent character were rare before the appearance of Wang Nengtao’s New Propaganda Posters. Xu Bing’s highly influential late eighties piece Xi Shi Jian was one of the valuable ones. It used its destructiveness to make it an important road sign on the path to the end of old-style printmaking.

There’s no point in reiterating the casualties inflicted by this heavenly scripture, but strictly speaking, it prophesied the end days. It didn’t fully hit the vital organs of old-style printmaking. The false ideographs in Xi Shi Jian bring woodcarving into the realm of etymology, negating the possibility of using the visual language of woodcarving to resist the rule of language and bring it down another blind alley of logical inference in that it never truly addressed the issue of printing being subservient to words. Adding the overly elitist design of the false ideographs, it wasn’t able to be much use to the folk-based writing system, and time went to show that it was nothing more than a self-contained conceptual game. The New Propaganda Posters that Wang Nengtao has been creating since the turn of the century are aimed at the most fundamental issues faced by printmaking. It enters from the aspects of words and images and casts off the two heavy mountains that have been pressing down on printmaking – words and religion, and without looking back, it brings printmaking right into the realm of new issues, the topics that are much more important to us in this era. This marks the end of traditional printmaking and the path to the doors of independent thought.

 II

In order to call Wang Nengtao’s works New Propaganda Posters, one must first resolve two issues: what is meant by “new”, and what is actually being propagandized? Only when the second issue is resolved can we define Wang Nengtao’s propaganda posters as “new”. In the times of centralized power, the term ‘propaganda’ was once full of unsavory undertones. It was used to poison the people’s minds, strip them of the power of independent analysis and execute some unspeakable goal. Wang Nengtao’s images have an anti-propaganda awareness. They request that printmaking no longer works for the dependent aims of other ideologies such as literature, religion, commerce or power, instead that it proactively spreads an expression that is full of the sounds of personal freedom. Once art gains self-awareness, it will automatically break with the past.

‘New’ is used in terms of being opposite to ‘old’. It is both a continuation and a step forward, but what is really important is that it represents something that hasn’t been there before. What Wang Nengtao is promoting is a ‘neo-utopianism’. This new ism is a transcendence of eternally unfulfilled utopian daydreams and old idealism. ‘Neo-utopianism’ is a commitment to future happiness. It is not hard to discover to slogans and symbols in New Propaganda Posters, as they are all Wang Nengtao’s personal visions about the new utopia. These visions are a step above the false, empty and inevitably withering false utopian ideals of the Cultural Revolution. All of the signs indicate that the current society is not promoting, but continually obstructing the emergence of any form of utopia.

 Slogans are the most direct transmitters of wishes. They’re not shouted out through dogmas. Empty chants have always been short on power – they must have images as positive and negative evidence. Wang Nengtao’s dissolution of the empty palace dialogue is exactly the opposite. First, the slogans appear in a leading position in the picture only to be smashed by the image, which hints at the logical preposterousness of images and words. Through this he consigns the false utopian dialogue to limbo, replacing it with Wang Nengtao’s world ideals founded in universalism. At the same time, the dauntless attitude of positive struggle that has persisted since the founding of the People’s Republic is transferred over by Wang Nengtao; amidst the strikes of doubt towards collectivism, and based on his own kind heartedness and his wide open frame of mind, we can see that aside from the bloodstains left by the construction of this nation-state there are still some things worth cherishing and respecting: in an age of law of the jungle capitalism, the family-style socialist imagination has a warm side, and it vanquished the faceless fear of homelessness. In the portraits in Wang Nengtao’s New Propaganda Posters, one cannot detect the slightest trace of fear or dread. In the eyes of these people, all we see is unbending determination.

III

Wang Nengtao had already announced the appearance of “Neo-utopianism” much earlier with Chronicle of Fleeting Time. This utopian illusion is not the forgetting of historic tribulations but transcendence on a much higher level; only with transcendence can we better deal with tribulation. The positive mental state inside New Propaganda Posters tries to wipe away all manner of anxiety. When you live in the hatred and haze of the past, you trap yourself in an eternal cage. The Chinese people of today need to reshape their self confidence after a century of humiliation and suffering to help them get on the road again. New Propaganda Posters plans to be useful in this regard. Lu Xun[i] racked his brains over how to make woodcarving prosper in modern China, first because woodblocks could print on paper and be immediately disseminated, and secondly because the fates of woodblock printing and the nation state are inextricably linked. New Propaganda Posters has already shown marks and effects of a strong effort in this direction. What Wang Nengtao needs to worry about is when and where he should stop looking back at the past so that New Propaganda Posters is not misunderstood as lacking depth of thought and being a mere blind filtering of the past.

Lu Xun had already recognized by 1930 that woodblocks were absolutely not wasted bones dressed up in new attire, but the common psychological desire of artists and society. Wang Nengtao observed this, and never made any pointless stops in the linguistic and formic exploration of printmaking. Of course in comparison to Chronicle of Fleeting Time, New Propaganda Posters has obviously discarded surplus elements in the picture and established a distance from the conventions of pop. The colors go from gray to bright, and every line in the picture sparkles against the pure color backdrop and appears clean and refined. More than just tools for creating shapes, the independent lines accurately hint at the emotions of the people in the picture. Wang Nengtao’s images are more concerned with direct observation; he’s not very interested in concepts, and he hasn’t prepared a lot of expressional content in his pictures, which would only get in the way of his focus on utopian fantasies. His destructiveness is in that his pure and concentrated images assist in the giant visual stimulus of the overall picture. This, and the constant correspondence and preposterousness of the multiple relationships between word and image have saved printmaking from the humiliating realm of a subservient toy and conceptual game, and opened another kind of contemporariness for printmaking.

Chen Yinke[ii] once said that the academics of an era must have its own new material and issues. Though this is a simple statement, it makes for the best footnote on contemporariness. Though Wang Nengtao’s New Propaganda Posters aim towards the future, they more squarely face the present. His art has for many years worked to promote the transformation of the ‘individual’ identity in society into that of the ‘citizen’. The ‘individual’ in the classicalist sense is one who doubts so-called social justice, shared responsibility and universal ethics; the contemporary concept of ‘citizen’ abandons the narrow definition of ‘individual’, is not satisfied with himself, and is more concerned with personal well-being within the greater good of the overall nation-state.

 Therefore, in Wang Nengtao’s New Propaganda Posters, aside from the images of China’s leaders, the likenesses of his family members have started to play an important role. Whether they are mementos of that special time or images from the most recently recorded happy times, aside from having the personal qualities of fresh personas, they’re also naturally tinted with a corresponding aura of the times. Wang Nengtao’s ability is to appropriately mix these two elements into a perpetual whole; almost all of his prints cherish images as if they will be gone in an instant. Unlike other contemporary works that often make use of family resources, Wang Nengtao’s images have most soberly presented a structural societal scene that these particular people were truly born into, rather than that overly empty familial imagination.

                             IV

The birth of Chinese printmaking was connected with the compilation and printing of traditional family trees. These family trees recorded such information as the emergence, migration and fractioning of the clan. Wang Nengtao has a much larger ‘family→ clan→ ethnicity→ world’ concept. This world concept has kept Wang Nengtao from following that all too common destructive path of falling into the pit of orientalism. Wang Nengtao did away with the cathartic expressionist style and the expression of youth in the transformation stages of backwards socialist countries way back in the late nineties. Despite this, there are still traces of expressionist tendencies in New Propaganda Posters, so that behind the seemingly delightful portraits in Wang Nengtao’s works lies a bit of anxiety towards the new era and the new form of nation-state.

Though Wang Nengtao obviously has the ability to grasp the big themes that are part and parcel of having a wide open frame of mind, his works always must be presented and understood as series. Though a single work on its own doesn’t completely lose its effect, it will lose the unified significance that comes when multiple works are exhibited and explained together. This unity is one of Wang Nengtao’s methods for providing the audience with an understanding of real society, and it is imbued with the typical romantic complex of neo-utopianism. Romance requires imagination. The use of imagination to grasp an artwork was once dismissed as the least reliable of parlor tricks, but with Wang Nengtao, imagination is a necessary step because New Propaganda Posters is imbued with the qualities of a riddle, and though this kind of riddle is not the unequivocal scheme to be implemented in the future by ‘neo-utopianism’, it has everything that will be needed to solve the future issues of a people.

The riddle-like New Propaganda Posters is usually only effective for two kinds of people: those who know nothing about art and those who know everything about art. The riddle of New Propaganda Posters can be nothing other than history, has history is also waiting for the day when the riddle can be solved.

In all of Wang Nengtao’s works together, there are two qualities that are inseparable: one is melancholy and the other enlightenment. The melancholy gives his works psychological depth, and the enlightenment allows the artist to keep a broad view in front of the world’s ups and downs, and maintain the purity of the art. Of these two qualities, Wang Nengtao places more importance on the latter, because he knows that his prints are a kind of treatment. In this hypocritical national dialogue system and these heart-freezing times, people with heart will surely seek comfort inside. This is not a political behavior, but the Daoist-Zen inspiration method that one must attain when in the deepest of pits and weakest of spots. Though printmaking has come to an end, what it has left behind will be preserved much better. When people live in love, they will surely prosper.