Zeng Fanzhi B. 1964

曾梵志 Smiling Bei Ke Ning

Footnotes

Provenance
ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

歡笑的貝克寧
油彩木板
1989年作

簽名：89 梵志
背面附北京四合苑畫廊標籤

來源
上海香格納畫廊
現藏家直接購自上述畫廊

From the late 1970s onwards, China would undergo a profound and fundamental cultural transformation. A new era of creativity would enliven every aspect of the art world. It would take decades for this transformation to become as obvious as it is now, with China now home to hundreds of galleries, world-class art fairs and museums, and the contemporary art to fill those walls. The earliest rumblings of this transformation would begin in the academies. Unburdened by the previous cultural propaganda system, young art students across the nation were suddenly exposed to an extraordinary range of tools, techniques, and philosophies that they would digest and incorporate into their own visions and inspirations.

Over the years, the painter Zeng Fanzhi emerged as one of the foremost interpreters of Chinese experience. His emotionally raw, intuitive, and psychologically penetrating paintings anticipated the emotional and psychological strain that would haunt the new nation. Zeng's concern over the alienation and loneliness inherent to modern life was captured in his iconic Mask series of the mid-1990s, but in significant ways these concerns lay at the very heart of his work from the beginning.

Born and raised in the provincial city of Wuhan, Zeng earned his painting degree at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. As a student, he found inspiration in the expressionist works of German and Dutch artists such as Willem De Kooning and Max Beckmann, both of whom relied on an expressionistic palette to imbue seemingly mundane subjects with psychological drama and existential gravitas.
The present lot, Smiling Bei Ke Ning, comes from these very early days of Zeng's discovery of his "voice" as an artist. Painted late in 1989, the painting features a sitter (a classmate of the artist's, nicknamed Bei Ke Ning), casual and relaxed as if for a candid photograph, resting on the weight of his expansive arms. Everything about Zeng's handling of the subject and the paint contradicts his apparent repose and the "happy" theme. The figure appears to be young, but his features are malformed and heavy, lips appear enlarged and out of shape, one eye strays while the other appears swollen. His right arm descends into a club-like fist. Zeng appears to have laid his composition down quickly in swift, delineating black strokes, filling in the figure primarily in whites, greys and blacks, some ochre and red. The strokes are thick, roaming, and agitated. The figure's receding hairline is obscured by a scrawl of red which extends into the background, itself mostly a blaze of a furious bloody red. Zeng has always been keenly attuned to the emotional and psychological impact of his color choices, and the dynamic arrangement of the palette suggests his study of de Kooning or the storm and symphony of color found in the works of Clyfford Still (fig. 1).

Smiling Bei Ke Ning anticipates Zeng's important early Meat and especially his Hospital paintings. While still a student, Zeng's humble accommodations required that he make use of the public toilet at a neighboring hospital. The experience of passing through a hospital waiting room on a daily basis, the juxtaposition of life in crisis against the backdrop of a cold and immobile bureaucratic institution, inevitably found its way into Zeng's earliest works (fig. 2, 3). Smiling Bei Ke Ning suggests the psychological conflicts that would drive his paintings for years to come. The figure sits amid a field of emotional chaos, but attempts to strike a pose of relaxation, despite even a large spider crawling up his inner arm. In later works, the alienation of the figure would take the shape of a grinning mask (fig. 4). Here it is suggested by the raw, brutalized, uncontained body. He effectively becomes an early patient of one of Zeng's "hospitals", expecting solace in a wretched, violent, unstable world. The great breakthrough for artists in the post-Mao period was to represent the world not in some idealized form but in subjective, philosophical, and existential terms. With Smiling Bei Ke Ning, we see how alert Zeng was from the very beginning to the emotional life of his contemporaries as well as how skillful and adept he was with the tools to communicate them.

從1970年代末起中國文化發生了天翻地覆的轉變，隨著嶄新的創意時代來臨，藝術界各個層面隨之蓬勃發展，歷經數十年後這些轉變才真正彰顯出來。如今中國有上百間畫廊落戶，擁有世界級的藝術博覽會和美術館，更有數量豐沛的當代藝術品充斥著。這股劇變的洪流最早源自於院校，全國各地的青年藝術學子沒有過去須為文化宣傳服務來創作的包袱，突然間接觸到各式各樣的工具、技法以及在哲學思潮洗禮之下，他們求知若渴並融會貫通，形成了他們自己的藝術願景和視野。
這幾年來曾梵志已成為詮釋中國人經驗的領軍畫家。他的繪畫穿透出赤裸裸、直覺式和精神性的心理狀態，預示了新中國將普遍感受到的情緒和精神壓力。曾梵志關注現代生活所帶來的疏離和孤獨感，在他1990年代中期的標誌性《面具》系列中表現得淋漓盡致，但實際上這些關注早已是他早期創作靈感的核心思維了。

曾梵志出生並成長於武漢，畢業於湖北美術學院油畫系。在學生時期受到德國和荷蘭藝術家如威廉・德・庫寧（Willem De Kooning）和馬克斯・貝克曼（Max Beckmann）的啟發，這兩名藝術家都是藉由表現主義手法為看似平凡的主題增添內在戲劇的張力，呈現帶有存在感的莊嚴氣魄。

此作《歡笑的貝克寧》是曾梵志奠定個人藝術語彙的早期作品。此作創作於1989年末，畫中坐著的人物（藝術家同學，暱稱貝克寧）用粗壯的雙臂撐住身體，率性輕鬆的模樣好像是在擺姿勢拍照。然而曾梵志處理主題的手法以及選擇的色彩卻與「快樂」的主題大相徑庭。男子看起來年少，但是五官變形而且沈重，嘴唇大得誇張，一隻眼睛斜看他處，另一隻眼睛明顯腫大，右手臂向下形成一個類似棒槌的拳頭。曾梵志好似是用黑色線條快速地完成構圖，再用白、灰、黑和赭與紅色顏料填滿男子的形體。藝術家粗重的筆觸在畫布上漫游卻透露出焦慮。男子漸退的髮線模糊成一團紅並與背景融成一片，整個人可以說幾乎是一團憤怒的腥紅色。曾梵志在色彩的選擇上始終是以傳達情緒和精神力量為目的，在此他豐富的顏色安排顯露出對德・庫寧的研究，或者對克萊佛・史提（Clyfford Still）作品中狂烈或交響樂般色彩的鑽研（圖一）。

《歡笑的貝克寧》預示了曾梵志重要的早期作品《肉聯》系列，尤其是《協和醫院》系列。他還是學生的時候，因為居住的地方設備簡陋而不得不經常借用附近醫院的公共廁所。日復一日他走過醫院的候診間，看到冷漠、體制僵硬的官僚體系中生命的無常，這樣的經驗自然而然便滲入他早期的作品（圖二）。《歡笑的貝克寧》展現出來的矛盾心理，是他後來作品中經常出現的主題。這件作品的主人翁內心混亂不安，甚至有一隻大蜘蛛爬在臂膀內側，他仍努力做出一派輕鬆的姿態。在往後的作品中，曾梵志均以露齒微笑的面具來表現人物這樣的疏離心理，但在此是以粗糙、受傷、失控的身體作為暗示。往後曾梵志將這樣的人物發展成《協和醫院》中一件早期作品裡，期望在扭曲、暴力、不穩定世界中找到慰藉的病患。做為後毛時期的藝術家，他們的重大突破不在於呈現某種理想，而是從主觀的、哲學的和存在主義的角度去表現這個世界。在《歡笑的貝克寧》中，我們看到曾梵志很早便對他這一代人的精神狀態有敏銳的體會，並以高超的技藝用畫筆將之傳達出來。