Monograph by Dr. John Baldacchino, Associate Professor of Art Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York
To ‘look with’
Wei Li Zhu’s art of gentle truth
John Baldacchino
When human deeds of aesthetic experience become accessible in a variety of forms, men and women seek to measure up these forms with what is out there, with the so-called here and now, with the everyday … with reality. As art develops and changes across the ages, artists also find themselves toying with different scales and criteria for their art, although the rest of humanity still seems to demand that art has a relationship with ‘the Truth as everyone sees it’. While art appears to become more sophisticated — and some would argue, less accessible — human beings still measure it by means of their relationship with their aesthetic expectations and experiences.
One way of getting one’s head around this apparent dilemma is to recall what the Hungarian philosopher George Lukács had to say about art. Lukács argued that art’s objective is to become a ‘special “world” not only for those who are approached by it, but also for its creator’. This does not make of art’s speciality an elitist narrative. Rather, in art’s ‘special “world”’ everyone partakes of a means by which one could participate in the speciality that we sometimes identify with humanity, history, or indeed the fulfilment of our individual and collective objectives. On this scale of speciality, art becomes a plural event that enables us to understand the world on our own diverse terms. So even when this world of ours is not a pretty picture to look at, art allows us to approach it with individual expectations, but more so with a sense of responsibility.
Art’s ‘special “world”’ is not devoid of a judgemental edge. In this respect there is always a tendency to measure and judge artworks through the lens of the so-called ‘artistic process’. Nowadays this reaches extents where whenever one mentions the word ‘art’ one is also expected to qualify what this ‘art’ really means: Is this art an installation of objects in a space? Is it a painting? Is it a performance? Is it a walk on the Highlands? Is it a human being pirouetting in a gallery? Is it challenging? Is it clean? Is it obscene or disturbingly violent? Is it a sculpture? And if this art is a sculpture, is this a sculpture where the object is indeed sculpted from material? Or is it an assemblage or even an arrangement of objects designated to represent something, or someone, or somewhere, or sometime, or … what is it?
A related line of questioning to ‘what is it?’ often starts with the now infamous question ‘Is it art?’ This question often heralds controversy over whether an object that appears in a gallery or art museum should be considered a work of art simply by dint of it being declared a work of art. Even after almost 100 years since Marcel Duchamp presented us with ‘found’ objects that in effect became works of art; and even after 50 years of a radical revolution initiated by Joseph Beuys, where it was declared by word and deed that everyone is an artist and every human activity — including day to day tasks such as sweeping or driving — is an art form; we are still not sure whether we could let go of art and engage with it as a plural ‘world’ — indeed as an event that keeps changing shape, form and meaning.
I
A quick, lazy, prima facie look at Wei Li Zhu’s art might suggest that her work thankfully spares us from controversial questions. At first her work seems ‘straight forward’; ‘easy’ to engage with; and rightfully loved and understood by the many who admire beautiful paintings. One will not be wrong to deem Wei Li’s artworks as works of portraiture and figurative art. Without any doubt Wei Li’s paintings are examples of strong and impeccable skill. Furthermore, one could never overlook or ignore the legitimate claims made by those who commission portraits from Wei Li — where their expectations and judgement on the ‘likeness’ of character and looks of her sitters is done justice, and more so regaled with a well-deserved beauty. Even when latter-day critics frown upon these qualities, such expectations from the portrait and figurative artist can never go belittled or ignored.
However, one hastens to add that it would be wrong to simply attribute to Wei Li’s work a framework of interpretation that is solely characterised by high skill, sensitivity to the sitter, or indeed beauty of rendition. Though skill, sensitivity and beauty are great merits in any work, such merits barely scratch the surface of the significance of the works in question. Wei Li’s art cannot be limited to its craft. Although figurative, Wei Li’s work forms an integral part of the contemporary lineage by which Beuys made us think twice about what we should be doing in real life, and where thanks to Warhol no one would ever look at a Campbell Soup can in the same way. Wei Li presents us with a body of work that holds a far wider and deeper complexity than simply a set of ‘very good paintings’.
Wei Li puts the viewer in a difficult spot because her work seems to be benign enough to let you in and leave you in a comfort zone. Yet in truth, her work leaves the viewer more uncomfortable and more perplexed than before. Indeed there is a point of admiration and affable engagement with the initial moment where eye meets painting and the brain starts to make out what is gazed upon. However on a closer look, and at a deeper level, one needs to engage with Wei Li’s work as one would not be able to do with a ‘traditional’ work of art. In fact, Wei Li’s art is essentially and quintessentially contemporary in both its spirit and more so in its response to the contemporary world. This is not simply assumed by the fact that what appears to be traditional in the way she depicts her sitters is by itself very contemporary to the trained eye. The contemporary character of Wei Li’s art is primarily attributable to the fact that the aura that is traditionally imbued in pre-Modernist figurative works of art is significantly and intentionally absent in her work. At best her work is reminiscent, suggestive, and perhaps nostalgic of such aura. But the aura is never there and this is not done by accident.
II
There is a major — one could say, historical — difference between a traditional, pre-Modern, work and a work that achieves the position by which Wei Li ‘frames’ her art form. By ‘framing’ one’s art form, I mean giving meaning to a work by the special and plural ‘worlds’ that it inhabits. This also means that the work as such is effective not as a conductor of meaning or conversations (otherwise art will be no different from a telephone!) but as a human activity that allows and invites us to take centre-stage in the world. This is done by one’s engagement with what the artist offers us in terms of her art — and not simply her response to a sitter or a subject by means of an art form that serves as an effective medium (as one sees happening in good works of craft). While this state of affairs seems universal to all works of art, what we find ourselves engaging with in a work that falls in late (or even post-) Modernity such as Wei Li’s, is that we start to establish ourselves within the work rather than simply take the role of an audience to a work. This applies to figurative portraiture more than any other genre.
In the best traditions of portraiture and figure painting of the last two or three decades, Wei Li follows suit in this opening of the work to women and men who are ever so eager to make of any work of art an episode in their daily lives. The portraits or figures in Wei Li’s work gently let us take over the art form, where it opens itself to the subjectivity by which we as human beings want to engage with the narrative that has taken place between the sitter and the artist. This narrative becomes a horizon of experience, but it does not simply rely on mere experience. We bring our experience to the narrative but we also learn from it. By its gentle forms, the artwork allows us to take notice of little things that the artist puts in the way of our experience. Thus on our way to reflect with the subjects in paintings like Spotted Scarf (1994), Reflections (1998) or Charlie (2004) we come across little details such as an apple or two, as if someone left them by accident. Yet this accident holds a major role in what seems to be an innocent act by which a painter might want to redress the compositional balance of a picture. Historically such compositional features would have been key tools in painting. And so was the use of arches and the sky — of which we see reminiscences in the paintings just mentioned but more so in Double Image (1994), The Reader (1994) and even more boldly in Julia (1995), Alternative View (2003) and Jug (1994). However it is evident that the compositional excuses that were used in pre-Modern figurative works, are transformed in Wei Li’s work as intervals between the contemporary urge to reclaim a ground for the gentle imagery that is presented to us, and the tacit questioning of the compositional forms of reasoning to which art was subject over hundreds of years. Like the missing aura, these are nostalgic remains of a lineage that is adopted on purpose. Wei Li adopts this lineage with pride and she is not afraid of the anxiety of influence that Harold Bloom ascribes to contemporary poets. She hides no anxiety over the recognition of the past. Indeed there is a pride of being part of that past. But there is also a pride in what is presented to us as a contemporary form that we could never read with the eyes of the past. The nostalgia in Wei Li’s work has nothing to do with an urge to go back, but denotes a pride of belonging to what we continue to call ‘art’.
As an indicator of this belonging, an innocent looking apple suddenly gets a bolder role in a chat between two pensive figures depicted in Conversation (1998) where the conversation takes place between objects as much as we expect human beings to talk to each other, rather than think at each other. In these works, human thinking takes on a different dimension of ‘thought’ and ‘talk’. In these paintings the act of thinking is also an act of ‘doing’. This is achieved by means of patterns on clothes and patterns on walls, which, in turn, begin to engage in their own conversations about the necessity of the contingent. Works like Stripes and Spots (1995), Childhood (2000) and Dialogue (2003) seem to suggest that the nature of the contingent is gentle yet assertive enough to disallow us from merely looking at the accidental nature of clothing as compositional features in a larger domain. In the clothing one does not see a trope for the eye to gaze simultaneously at the centre and the periphery. Rather, these paintings invite the viewer to concentrate on the detail while reminding him (or her) that this is a contemporary narrative that suggests to us something that makes it other to the non-contemporary. The tautological nature of this makeshift contradiction does not simply occupy the space of a language game by which we are asked to name these paintings as new or old, or nice or beautiful, or indeed inviting, or … Rather, this tautology demands that we name ourselves before we begin to rename the paintings. In other words we are asked to approach the paintings with responsibility and that responsibility is intended as an act that benefits us (aesthetically and ethically) as well as others.
If there is an argument for humanism in Wei Li’s artwork, it is a humanism that is done by the proxy of that which seems secondary to the human. It is secondary not because it is less important, but because it requires a high degree of responsibility both as an act of seeing but also as a human act of naming the world by means of art’s plural speciality. This apparent contradiction (resolved, as it is, by an act of proxy via a consideration of the Other) could be explained in the first place through a reading of the pictures that compose Wei Li’s art. Indeed while the depiction of the human figure dominates and is a protagonist of Wei Li’s art, the figure is not absolute. It is other than the figure; and likewise another figure of our own existential others — i.e. of you (singular) and you (plural). In this work, the human body is an embodiment of kindness; it is a gentle depiction and therefore a depiction that is ready to surrender itself to the humanity that the figure portends once composed and depicted. This figurative narrative holds no altercation between humans. Wei Li’s depiction of the human figure invites the thinking subject to do twice what he or she normally does. We are invited to think twice in deciding how we should look at the picture and how we should read what we are looking at — hence the open nature of this work.
This openness is not begotten from a theoretical whim. Wei Li’s figures are pensive and meditative. They often look away. With the exception of Tom (1995), Kevin (1995), Martin (1998) and Spawnforth (2000) no face looks you in the eye. And even when the mentioned portraits seem to look one in the eye, they are never invasive. Wei Li presents us with individuals who invite participant forms of observation where the act of ‘looking at’ is transformed into an invitation to ‘look with’ other human beings. ‘Looking with’ is an open act. It does not direct you anywhere specific and would never intervene in your gaze. To look with someone is an indirect conversation. It is indirect because while participating in looking at something, other persons are looking at other things. However all these other individuals are all looking together — with each other — at different things. This is an example of art as a plural event. As a plural event, or even as an event of plurality art and the act of ‘looking with’ is a character of an open work — a work, which Umberto Eco, after Luigi Pareyson, describes as a ‘work in movement’.
III
But are we supposed to look at something particular when we move with these open works? How open is this invitation to look with someone, when in effect the painting appears as a framed, closed and finite object? Eco reminds us that open works, as works in movement, are also works in progress. Wei Li’s works are individually complete. But her work, her opera — her art — remains open and it will remain so beyond Wei Li herself. The openness in Wei Li’s work has a very fundamental character to it that differentiates itself from other open works. As I have indicated above, her work is gentle. ‘Gentle’ does not mean ‘quiet’ or ‘discreet’. Wei Li’s work is gentle because it portends a strength that does not come from an invasive openness that invites its audience to the pathos of a Self that is torn apart. As one could see from open works in contemporary art, music or performance, openness could be violent and aggressive.
Francis Bacon always comes to mind when one talks about violence in painting — even though the violence is not on the canvas but in the human acts of transgression that prompts the reading and making of the canvas. Bacon himself is no more violent than his brush. Yet his work is effective because men and women have transgressed other men and women in history (— and alas, continue to do so.) There are moments when transgression overtakes openness and the movement of the work becomes itself a transgression in progress. This is ethically necessary, because humans cannot simply gaze without seeing. Yet to see history is also to understand history by the plural moods that characterise the human condition. And the act of being gentle is as effective — sometimes even as violent — as the great gestures that make a Pollock or a Bacon very special works of humanity. The speciality of the gentle has a sharp edge — as sharp as any edge that art’s speciality could use.
Surely when we are invited to view works like Wei Li’s Light Shines Through (1999), Red Tie and Childhood (2000) we are not invited to the deceptively innocent (as one would find in the highly effective works of gentility (double entendre intended) in John Currin’s wonderfully figurative childlike-yet-very-mature narratives (such as his well known paintings Stamford After-Bruch [2000] and The Pink Tree [1999]). Here we have a depiction of a responsible, calm and gentle childhood. No irony and no trope. Wei Li depicts these children as moments in life that we are invited to inhabit through their own gaze. The world is apparently gentle. We are not sure about this but we are expected to view it with them. They look away. They look somewhere else and we try to look at what they are looking. This world is very curious and indeed enigmatic. The gentle art becomes sharper by the minute and we start to have doubts whether we are exactly inhabiting a child’s world. Currin’s world is gestural, sexy and because it is also highly figurative, it is deceptively easy and inviting. His adults look childish and to many extents, deceptively happy. Wei Li’s children look less innocent, but they do not harbour any gaiety or deception. Even if spared from a Freudian commentary, the childhood that is beholden in Wei Li’s work — including others like Playmates I and Playmates II (2000) — is quickly overtaken by the adolescence and early adulthood that other paintings like Trumpet (2000), Alternative View and Dialogue (2003) strangely narrate.
Wei Li’s gentle invitation becomes a compelling, and therefore highly effective way of questioning the world by which children and young adults invite us to re-consider gaiety and light-heartedness. As in Currin’s, in Wei Li’s work there is a certain play on the theme of childhood. But unlike Currin, Wei Li does not make use of tropes. Rather she makes use of the question, which substitutes that of tropes. In this way, although there are no political or social statements harboured in Wei Li’s work (as one finds in Currin’s), one is still confronted by a radical questioning of our daily lives. But whereas in Currin one could elect laetitia as a new virtue (perhaps because his work seems to remind us of the need for gaiety as a form of understanding), in Wei Li’s work we are reminded of a gentle version of that old virtue of prudentia, where albeit by gentle proxy, we are reminded of the discreet nature of human understanding.
Surely Wei Li’s work requires us to face facts and also to confront ourselves with the truth. In a world where the truth comes to us in the form of a question — we are also required to take responsibility of any relativism by which we play with patterns and accidents of life. Ultimately we have to face our responsibilities as ultimately human responsibilities. It may well be that truth is open — for the time being — and the door to it is gently left ajar for us to be able to work our way in. Surely as a work in movement, truth is a work in progress that could be a delicate matter to deal with. Yet ultimately truth is robust and there could be nothing more robust — philosophically, artistically, ethically, and scientifically — than Truth itself. This is what Wei Li’s gentle truth gives us. Her art is a gift to us. It is given in empathy because that is the only way we could give art. It is a ‘looking with’ while it remains a plural event and therefore open to the progress and processes by which we continue to seek, and ultimately understand, our special world.
* * *
Ultimately, no words could add anything to art — given that the language of representation and that of words remain different human faculties. Yet, while mindful of the parallel nature of this essay to Wei Li’s work, I would like to think that other conversations could arise from reflections such as these.
John Baldacchino
Columbia University, New York
Wednesday, December 14, 2005