Qin Feng in Berlin - An Artistic Encounter
Ingrid Raab, Founder and Director, Raab Gallery Berlin; Consultant, German Art Association; Board of Directors,
European Gallery Association
[Article published in Art Report , Beijing, China, September 2004]
The cultural achievements of China over four millenniums have been greatly admired in Europe. Nevertheless is the knowledge about Chinese culture limited. We know when Xerxes, Alexander the Great or Dschingis Khan lived, while the best known historic Chinese personality in Europe is K'ung Fu-Tsi, whose name we pronounce in its Latin version of Konfuzius. While in European tradition the great conquerors, important battles and powerful kingdoms dominate history, the Chinese tradition pays highest tribute to the scholar, who is placed on top of society. Furthermore, ten thousand Chinese signs and the fact that China was inaccessible for most of its history, led to an image of a country that is impenetrable to us. While we looked at China for a long time with great respect for the historical tradition, we have discovered since the Chinese exhibition in London in 1843, how close Chinese values are to our own values and how they could serve us to deliver the best ideas for building up modern societies.
Since the nineteenth century, traditional Chinese shapes in furniture, painting and drawing became models of our civilization, despite the ruptures that have ravaged modern civilization in the twentieth century. There is a lesson mankind can learn from Chinese culture; continuity of human values will survive the storms of time.
No other country founds its culture on art, history and philosophy like China. This immanent continuity is preserved until today, because Chinese statesmen were artists; Mao was a poet.
His famous poem "snow" describes the beauty of landscape in a traditional Chinese way. Mao takes pride in choosing a form of expression that has been valid over millenniums, in order to describe what man should aspire at in every generation. By the means of poetry he strives for the search of an eternal order to things, thus following his masters' examples with great admiration. There are rules, consisting in an inner, eternal order and at the same time there is an abundance of ways to work within this order with extreme freedom of spiritual expression and the determination to find solutions for today. There is as well trust that these solutions will be suited to define the future. A trust that does not derive from hope, but from the experience of the past.
Chinese culture is highly appreciated in Germany. Some of its best examples have been collected and are now admired in our museums and in castles of former kings and princes. From there derives a continuous interest in Chinese culture.
I was very excited many years ago, when a cultural exchange program between Chinese and German contemporary artists was suggested to me.
Certainly I had a clear idea of what I was going to send to China, but at the same time I imagined the art from China I would expect. Unfortunately the German advisor on the exchange program did not suggest works of art to me, that were influenced and inspired by the great Chinese cultural tradition, but what I was shown did not express a specific Chinese culture. It did not tell me enough about a world and a powerful culture, that I had admired for such a long time. That as a consequence would teach me to understand more about the contemporary spirit of China.
I asked the German advisor of the exchange program to suggest artists to me working in the tradition of calligraphy. She told me, that she did not know of any artist in China who was practicing the traditional Chinese art form, which however I hoped was a lack of information. I had no doubt that the Chinese tradition of calligraphy could still be found in China. A tradition that in Germany in the 20th century has been very influential to define new abstract ideas after the invention of cubism.
Artists who longed to express poetic, biomorphic or musical elements in their works found out, that these more blurred values were hard to express in cubistic or geometrical forms. They were looking for artistic means to show different meaning in one single painting and were fascinated by the means, Chinese calligraphy could offer to them. To them this was a possibility for an artistic form that gave art a guiding meaning and an universal order. Notwithstanding that these German artists could not read Chinese signs. To them they were an expression of eternal truth, although unknown and inexplicable. In China nature, art and religion were considered over several millenniums to be facets of a reality that man is unable to perceive. As a consequence, the search for forms that transcend ideas in an abstract language led some German artists to find new ways of expression in Chinese calligraphy and its inner order.
After Bauhaus and its modern achievement, reactionary forces came to power in Germany in the thirties of the 20th century. At that time it was a relief to the artist Fritz Winter to discover Chinese art and develop new artistic forms out of this ancient tradition, that helped him cope with the storms of time. After World War II and in the middle of destruction Fritz Winter's modern imagery, that has its origin in Chinese art, was comforting, strong and modern. In that sense it helped people in Germany to find a new orientation. The order of things and the extreme freedom of images gave way to a new approach to life.
Although I saw these works forty years ago, they still are very important to me because they led a way to distinguish a great work of art from images of every day mass cultural phenomena.
In 1994, to my great happiness, I found an artist living in Berlin, who had an education in calligraphy and came from Beijing. This is when I first saw works by Qin Feng. I was relieved to find out, that in the end it is worthwhile in life to wait for what you long to see. Finally a contemporary Chinese artist more than fulfilled all my expectations about bringing an old and precious tradition to the future.
Our first exhibition at the gallery was a surprise to people and I will never forget the opening night of joyful excitement, with German and Chinese language floating through the gallery like music, while the works hanging at the wall conveyed a spirit and a language as old as man- art. I do not understand Chinese language, but I was certain that we all felt a similar joy while looking at these breathtaking and beautiful works and that in front of the floating artworks the language of art had no borders.
There was another attitude in Qin Feng's behavior that distinguished him from German artists. He followed the old Chinese tradition in seeking to find the advise of scholars. In our first exhibition many scholars of the Freie Universit?t in Berlin were present..
At the same time he was working together with other artists to develop his painterly achievements, among them his brother. Again he is following an old Chinese tradition, as handed down to us about Su Tung-p'o: Two long tables were put up, facing each other and fine brushes, ink and three hundred sheets of paper were placed upon the tables, together with food and drinks. When Tung-p'o saw the arrangement he laughed and sat down. Between each gulp they smoothed the papers and wrote. Two boys were rubbing the ink, but they could hardly cope with the speed of the writers. At the end the wine was drunk and the papers spent. Then each one took the scripts of the other and bade farewell. Later on it appeared that they had never been writing in a better way.
While calligraphy was on the agenda, nobody could tell whether it was used to write a poem, to express the rhythm of the artist's body, the beauty of Chinese signs or to paint a painting. All three actions were merged one into the other, as calligraphy served rhythm and space and needed spontaneity and lightness as much as an improvised poem.
Since our first exhibition, eight years have passed and we are showing the recent works of Qin Feng at our gallery. In our new space the work is presented next to a waterfall, that looks as if it was built especially for the exhibition. Water is the symbol of one of the great elements that Qin Fang's works deal with. In the building by one of the most famous architects in Germany, Josef Paul Kleihues, Qin Feng's works look at home. Josef Paul Kleihues is an architect whose creative power can as well be defined by a scholarly aspect. Among the rules that he respects is the rule of symmetry, again a virtue that Chinese culture has preserved over the millenniums. In the building Qin Feng's works look Chinese, while at the same time their language is present in our culture in a natural way. In the meantime Qin Feng has become a master of his kind. His works remind me of tales that are told about great Chinese masters. His works carry the knowledge of a great tradition and every sign, every brush stroke is executed with pride and self- assurance. Each work therefore transcends the spirit of wisdom that over the centuries has been preserved by the next generation of Chinese masters. This is what I had longed to experience to see. Chinese artworks that represent what Chinese culture is about: Fierceness, determination, patience, the desire to allow a glimpse at the spirit of creation and our joyful readiness to admire it.
There are subtle, clear ways to strike our senses by means of painterly expression:
mankind has always struggled with fate, whether it is encountered with nature- symbolized in Qin Feng's works by powerful landscapes, waves and raindrops, - or with human temper, that can as well be expressed by these symbols.
Not only has Qin Feng become a master of the age-old Chinese painterly expressions, but he is as well living according to the standards of Chinese masters. His wife is a scholar, his house in the suburbs of Beijing is surrounded by a landscape garden where you find water, flowers, trees and bamboo. Thus to imagine life in the mirror of nature is at hand. In his studio works are born that reflect the tradition of Kuo Hsi, who felt that man was excluded from nature, but that a good artist is capable of rendering its spirit. The reproduction of nature in a painting serves as a model to look at an imagined landscape while refreshing our thinking. In our mind nature symbolizes human experience and as it is older than man, it has a clarifying power on our thinking.
Our brain likes to play with symbols. Instead of quarrelling with another person or being depressed by a disaster, we can look at life in a wider sense through symbols in a work of art. It is difficult to cope with a problem that we are facing, but it is extremely helpful to reflect upon our daily struggles while for example looking at a threatening wave in a work by Qin Feng. The wave symbolizes an age- old human combat with fate, which we recognize is more powerful than any daily problem. Looking at a powerful painting therefore is an experience to face life without fear: a personal disaster may be threatening, but compared to the power of nature, expressed in a masterly panting, a problem gets distanced and its threatening presence disappears. Nothing is going to happen to me, while I look at art, on the contrary, a master painting and its inlaid meaning may arise creative thinking and thus help to overcome a problem in real life.
Looking at a masterpiece of art means at the same time to reflect, to perceive and to think. In daily life we are surrounded by a lot of images floating around. While we refuse to remember every single image of everyday life, art makes us stop at a thought and connect it with other images or memories and abstract or figurative sights come to our minds. These mental images may have been unconscious or sleeping in our brain, but an artwork will bring these thoughts to light and will establish an inner order to our thinking. Our perception climbs up a ladder from being Zombie to being conscious. All of a sudden, through the media of art, we catch a glimpse of the eternal and the sublime, the phenomena that are precious to our existence. This is what we experience as happiness.
Art is not art. Not every artwork has a fascination that makes us perceive life in all its facets. Looking at artworks by Qin Feng means looking at the work of a master, he is one of those exceptional people that have always existed to make other people wonder. I am very grateful to Qin Feng that he opened new doors to Chinese culture to me, a culture that I have admired a lifelong in traditional examples, in a dialogue with other German artists and now finally in Contemporary art, leading to new expressions and ideas in a country with a great future.
Qin Feng's works bear a positive character. His art conveys myriads of human experience, because it respects Chinese culture, at the same time it is artwork of our time, that I can understand. I sense new developments leading to ideas for the future. In times of globalism this is a very important artistic characteristic. In my opinion national and international art is of no bearing, because it is too limited to superficial spirits of time. However, art with very regional, specific and traditional traits that is understood universally- which to me are the characteristics of Qin Feng's works-, is the strongest means to building bridges between cultures. Over millenniums Chinese culture has been a shining example in the history of man, but while it was very distanced to us in the past, artists like Qin Feng are proving today that it is understood universally.
In that sense Qin Feng is as well helping to bring his own culture to the future, to insure that the best modern ideas will be established for the sake of everybody. There are few artists in every generation who are executing such a promising task. They all share this rather unique spirit. In our gallery you can see Qin Feng's art next to other artists of his kind, Jean-Michel Alberola from France, Enzo Cucchi from Italy, Markus Lpertz and K.H. Dennig from Germany or Donald Sultan from the USA. All of them are artists, that contribute to a universal language, artists whose distinguishing features are to make the best modern thoughts visible. In many ways all these artists work in a kindred spirit, although in different traditions.
Jean- Michel Alberola takes great interest in the lives of people from the suburbs. His work is strongly influenced by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who already in the thirties and forties of the 20th century described the need to integrate people who are living at the borders of societies. The observation that societies strongly function like a brain, where preferably all parts are connected by highly sensitive neurons, is reflected in the drawing "La Pensee de Walter Benjamin" . Alberola's use of the color red as a symbol of life is encouraging the thought of making our societies more open and more self- determined. Thus an artwork describing phenomena of people that nobody likes to notice, immediately makes us reflect upon the most urgent tasks of modern societies.
Enzo Cucchi was brought up in the Italian countryside close to the sea near Ancona. His works are full of traditional images that come from old tales of his rural upbringing. The language of his images is known to everybody and can be understood everywhere, as tales are common possessions of societies. The specialty in his work and therefore typically regional- i.e. Italian, is the technique he uses: fresco. Why should he take any interest in using this old painterly technique? It is because he is interested in making light as visible as possible. In his paintings the colors are applied to the humid plaster. The light is forever enclosed and shining as strongly, as if the work was exposed to sunlight. Cucchi is another example of an artist preoccupied by the phenomenon of the elements: light, that is necessary for man to live.
Markus Lpertz is a German artist who was brought up after World War II and educated in a time, when the devastating destruction that Fascism brought to my country was present allover. Almost all traditional German values had been damaged by Fascism in the thirties and forties, but he understood that as a chance to redefine values and to try their validity in competition with other modern achievements of painting in the 20th century. To him going back to the sources of painting was therefore not limited to German art. He rather felt free to test the most important phenomenon of the 20th century: Einstein's invention of the theory of relativity of time and space. After many years of isolation during the Hitler regime, Lpertz could look at ideas wherever he wanted to and from whatever period of time. His character is that of an explorer, in his art he tests ideas to find out what could be the best for the future. In my opinion the theory of relativity is an important means to understand how limited human perception is. If an artist aims at making this phenomenon better understood, he is helping to level a way to modern values that everybody can understand. These values therefore become universal.
K.H. Dennig belongs to the same generation then Markus Lpertz. His education as an engraver, a handcraft that is heavy, where every line has to be done with determination, made him aware of the multifaceted possibilities of artistic expressions. He is a globetrotter, while traveling he draws. In his studio he paints, for his collectors he creates a surrounding that is unique, from painting to carpets, chairs, candlesticks, tables and even jewelery. Since 1983 his carpet designs have been executed in China, by the best traditional Chinese craftsmen. The style of his design is Western, the handcraft is Chinese and the material is Chinese silk or wool, treated with the knowledge of Chinese highly developed handcraft. The carpets may appear exotic to both Chinese and European eyes, but if there is a carpet manufactured today that is going to be the antiquity of tomorrow, then it is going to be a Dennig carpet. Not because of his design, or because of the masterly execution in China, but because of the bridge that these carpets build between two civilizations.
The American painter Donald Sultan is obsessed by the desire of beauty. His ideal fantasy is to imagine one of his paintings thrown into garbage, from where he would like it to be so beautiful that it is shining through the garbage, its beauty being immediately visible. It is about harmony that he is most concerned. Balance and signs that even in time of mass culture will prove how outstandingly beautiful a work of art can be. Even more: looking at all the inlaid beauty in his works we will try to make our lives more beautiful and achieve a harmony that has a meaning to us.
This is the company in which Qin Feng's works are hanging in our Berlin gallery. Our aim is to show artistic achievements of today, aiming at beauty and harmony and telling us tales that remind us of continuity in human existence. Qin Feng shares this spirit with the most important contemporary artists all over the world, whose works serve to make the best ideas help to bring about the best possible future for our societies.
Berlin, 15.6.2004