PRINTCatalogue Note:
Xu Bing, born in 1955, was sent to Beijing's poor countryside for resettlement during the peak of "Down to the Countryside Movement" in the 1970s. He spent a memorable time in Harvesting Town, Flower Pot Commune, Yanqing County in his youth. The difficult life gave him an unique experience: as a "lucky one" whose entire family was still alive, the townspeople often asked him to help with weddings and funerals. These special local experiences affected his art later on, making his works both mysterious and attractive.
After overcoming a series of difficulties, Xu Bing was admitted to Central Academy of Fine Arts, specializing in printmaking. Throughout his artistic life, printmaking, especially woodcuts, has influenced him the most. Xu wrote in "The Path of Repetition and Imprint ", "My interest in printmaking came from my love for typography. ‘Engraving' is an art of western intellectuals. It originated and was developed from the combination of things related to books, such as religion, epic poems, lead types, and illustrations. It's sort of like how the Chinese Southern School was born from poems and calligraphy. There's no better match than lead types and prints on good paper. The beauty from this ‘match' makes so many addicted to books. "
From the early "Series of Repetitions" to the incomprehensible Book from the Sky, the controversial "Ghosts Pounding the Wall," and then to the accessible "Square Word Calligraphy Classroom," Reading Landscapes, and finally to the series "Book from the Ground," his works reflect his interest of characters, typography, and printing. Although today there are fewer limits on the material for printmaking, such that even the latest popular culture can be incorporated, the common theme in his prints is still that of discovering the beauty of types. Xu said that he had a lot of free time to make steel prints and research types during the Cultural Revolution. He also discovered himself by learning about traditional Chinese culture when he practiced writing as a child. Characters are masked with layers of meaning, encouraging us to rethink about our limited understanding of culture. Xu tried to uncover the cultural masks of characters so that words and viewers can communicate without barrier.
After years of making prints, Xu Bing started working with new media. In the series "Reading Landscapes," he combined ink paintings with calligraphy. He said in an interview, "The series ‘Reading Landscapes' has two dimensions. On the one hand, it is about something that only Chinese artists could play with because it uses a very special quality in Chinese characters - namely, they are pictorial. On the other hand, it goes back to the relationship between nature and literary symbols. In this way, this kind of work can be said to have overcome language barriers. For example, you'd understand that this character refers to ‘tree' when you see that it's a tree-like symbol. You'd understand instantly. " A seemingly simple ink wash painting actually contains layers of rich meaning. To him, the five shades created in a single stroke of ink wash shows the Chinese's pursuit of depth. On the other hand, western oil painters strive for a single effect from multiple strokes, which requires various paint brushes, and trials of texture and stroke. The beauty of oil paintings is in the richness layered by a repeated process, while ink wash painting is more of a natural creation in which the artist and the material coordinate with each other and become inseparable.
Although he has lived in the west for many years, traditional Chinese culture, especially Southern School artwork and calligraphy, still influences Xu Bing greatly. He said, "Chinese intellectuals have always hoped to combine the literary with the pictorial, which have always been completely separate. That's why they keep copying poems about paintings in calligraphy. As for me, making ink wash painting itself is writing poetry; the two are already the same. It's such a simple thing! But we've always restricted ourselves with our imprinted ideas of artistic forms and styles. "
Reading Landscapes, was created in 2001, is the artist's understanding of how the characters, the ink, the picture, and the viewer may interact. The picture that he "reads" is actually a picture of garden rocks with the theme, "hidden mountains." Its composition includes mountains, rocks, trees, and woods. Instead of painting them with ink wash as in a Southern School painting, which would have detailed the textures and showed varied ink shades, Xu used calligraphic characters in clerical, semi-cursive, and oracle bone scripts. The painting is still pictorial. The viewer can still imagine the overall landscape by following each stroke in the character. For instance, "Rock" written in clerical script carves out the mountain's ridges in the fore- and mid-grounds and directs us to Rear Mountain written in traditional Chinese in the background. In between the "Rocks" are slices of "Wood," and "Woods" make up a forest that complement the rocks. There are annotations for small details - for example, "Here is a road, and there is a town at the mountains." In traditional works of "hidden mountains," artists would paint a house, and a quiet scholar either sitting in a house surrounded by the mountains, or walking on a meandering mountain path. Those extravagant elements are not seen in Xu Bing's works. Instead, we see simple words for "Stone Mural," "Cow Feces," Haystacks, and "Cornfield." Such elements come from the artist's sense of humor he cultivated from his early experience in the countryside. The painting itself seems to be part of the Harvesting Town - it is vivid, interesting, and full of life. No wonder that Xu Bing's professor would comment, "Xu Bing's sentiments for the countryside are a kind of love. I really like it." Actually, this sort of love has spanned many years of his artistic life. In the series of "Reading Landscapes," one could still see the beauty of elegance, peace, and simplicity in works like "Stone Village (1981, 49 x 66 cm) and Mountain Place (1985, 41 x 61 cm). The wheat field of "Mountain Place" actually became the forest of "Reading Landscapes." In this way, "Reading Landscapes" also tells his personal history.
After overcoming a series of difficulties, Xu Bing was admitted to Central Academy of Fine Arts, specializing in printmaking. Throughout his artistic life, printmaking, especially woodcuts, has influenced him the most. Xu wrote in "The Path of Repetition and Imprint ", "My interest in printmaking came from my love for typography. ‘Engraving' is an art of western intellectuals. It originated and was developed from the combination of things related to books, such as religion, epic poems, lead types, and illustrations. It's sort of like how the Chinese Southern School was born from poems and calligraphy. There's no better match than lead types and prints on good paper. The beauty from this ‘match' makes so many addicted to books. "
From the early "Series of Repetitions" to the incomprehensible Book from the Sky, the controversial "Ghosts Pounding the Wall," and then to the accessible "Square Word Calligraphy Classroom," Reading Landscapes, and finally to the series "Book from the Ground," his works reflect his interest of characters, typography, and printing. Although today there are fewer limits on the material for printmaking, such that even the latest popular culture can be incorporated, the common theme in his prints is still that of discovering the beauty of types. Xu said that he had a lot of free time to make steel prints and research types during the Cultural Revolution. He also discovered himself by learning about traditional Chinese culture when he practiced writing as a child. Characters are masked with layers of meaning, encouraging us to rethink about our limited understanding of culture. Xu tried to uncover the cultural masks of characters so that words and viewers can communicate without barrier.
After years of making prints, Xu Bing started working with new media. In the series "Reading Landscapes," he combined ink paintings with calligraphy. He said in an interview, "The series ‘Reading Landscapes' has two dimensions. On the one hand, it is about something that only Chinese artists could play with because it uses a very special quality in Chinese characters - namely, they are pictorial. On the other hand, it goes back to the relationship between nature and literary symbols. In this way, this kind of work can be said to have overcome language barriers. For example, you'd understand that this character refers to ‘tree' when you see that it's a tree-like symbol. You'd understand instantly. " A seemingly simple ink wash painting actually contains layers of rich meaning. To him, the five shades created in a single stroke of ink wash shows the Chinese's pursuit of depth. On the other hand, western oil painters strive for a single effect from multiple strokes, which requires various paint brushes, and trials of texture and stroke. The beauty of oil paintings is in the richness layered by a repeated process, while ink wash painting is more of a natural creation in which the artist and the material coordinate with each other and become inseparable.
Although he has lived in the west for many years, traditional Chinese culture, especially Southern School artwork and calligraphy, still influences Xu Bing greatly. He said, "Chinese intellectuals have always hoped to combine the literary with the pictorial, which have always been completely separate. That's why they keep copying poems about paintings in calligraphy. As for me, making ink wash painting itself is writing poetry; the two are already the same. It's such a simple thing! But we've always restricted ourselves with our imprinted ideas of artistic forms and styles. "
Reading Landscapes, was created in 2001, is the artist's understanding of how the characters, the ink, the picture, and the viewer may interact. The picture that he "reads" is actually a picture of garden rocks with the theme, "hidden mountains." Its composition includes mountains, rocks, trees, and woods. Instead of painting them with ink wash as in a Southern School painting, which would have detailed the textures and showed varied ink shades, Xu used calligraphic characters in clerical, semi-cursive, and oracle bone scripts. The painting is still pictorial. The viewer can still imagine the overall landscape by following each stroke in the character. For instance, "Rock" written in clerical script carves out the mountain's ridges in the fore- and mid-grounds and directs us to Rear Mountain written in traditional Chinese in the background. In between the "Rocks" are slices of "Wood," and "Woods" make up a forest that complement the rocks. There are annotations for small details - for example, "Here is a road, and there is a town at the mountains." In traditional works of "hidden mountains," artists would paint a house, and a quiet scholar either sitting in a house surrounded by the mountains, or walking on a meandering mountain path. Those extravagant elements are not seen in Xu Bing's works. Instead, we see simple words for "Stone Mural," "Cow Feces," Haystacks, and "Cornfield." Such elements come from the artist's sense of humor he cultivated from his early experience in the countryside. The painting itself seems to be part of the Harvesting Town - it is vivid, interesting, and full of life. No wonder that Xu Bing's professor would comment, "Xu Bing's sentiments for the countryside are a kind of love. I really like it." Actually, this sort of love has spanned many years of his artistic life. In the series of "Reading Landscapes," one could still see the beauty of elegance, peace, and simplicity in works like "Stone Village (1981, 49 x 66 cm) and Mountain Place (1985, 41 x 61 cm). The wheat field of "Mountain Place" actually became the forest of "Reading Landscapes." In this way, "Reading Landscapes" also tells his personal history.