New China / Old methods

National Wood Carving Sculpture Prize
As viewed through the eyes of an Australian Sculptor
Dong Yang
October 2002

I was privileged earlier this month to be one of two international jurors for China’s National Wood Carving Sculpture Prize. Having not visited China previously, I had to adjust to a very different environment and culture to my own, while maintaining a capacity to objectively evaluate a large number of sculptures.

With limited knowledge of the traditions of Chinese carving I stressed that my ability to assess the work lay relative to my own experience of making sculpture and with dealing with sculptural issues which are, as far as I understand, timeless and cross-cultural.

While I was in China, I strove to respect the values of the culture as far as I could understand them, which were as limited as the very short duration of my stay. At the same time my presence would be manifest by my own nature which is exuberant sometimes prior to a more complete understanding. I felt also, that I might have made a contribution outside of my role as juror, which related to my observations of the condition of contemporary sculpture.

The prize was more or less divided between traditional and contemporary sections. The traditional section was exhibited under cover, while the contemporary works were placed in an open courtyard. While equal consideration was given to both types of work in the judging, the traditional works were clearly more ‘valued’ by being protected from the elements. The majority of wards was given to the contemporary section. The exhibition as a whole was complemented by being housed in a one thousand year-old palace which, with its carved architectural features contextualised the practice of wood carving as being part of an ongoing culture.

On the evening prior to judging, the jury met to discuss the criteria for assessment. I was gratified to hear the elder statesmen of Chinese sculpture discussing the same issues with which I was concerned; they being the use of material, composition, innovation and creativity.

The award was given after a quite thorough and exhaustive process to a relief carving of Lotus flowers (insert name of artist) by a clear margin of jurors.

During discussions prior to judging and during the judging process, much attention was given to the contemporary works. These works were generally seen to bear the weight of promise for the way in which the traditional forms might be enlivened. The traditional forms were more tied to an industrial and economic reality where carvers and their workshops of assistants depend on strong sales to maintain the machinery of production. Those carvers were also seen to be limited or restricted by the parameters through which the works are executed and marketed. Due to the influence of market pressures, the subject of those works was bound to not threaten preconceived ideas of ‘beauty’ that a financial value is obliged to support.

My concern for the traditional works, which employed a greater understanding of the issues of sculpture and also employed a much higher craft skill was that it also ran the risk of becoming virtuoso, too clever, overcrafted. The issue in art everywhere, is how does one achieve a mastery over a material without in turn losing the mystery. It was the relative ignorance of the issues of carving that was sometimes more liberated in the contemporary carvings.

The task therefore has to be to find a middle point, where ignorance meets knowledge in a creative union.

The question in my mind emerged. How can the strength and tradition of Chinese wood carving be fed by new life? To what extent would the strength of the tradition be compromised by taking on subjects with which that tradition was not familiar? Some of the contemporary works bore the scars of a western influence. For me these works presented no scope for integration with a Chinese sensibility. Despite the poorer execution of the contemporary works many also suffered in my mind of becoming craft in a worse sense; being merely tasteful or ‘aesthetically’ configured.

My conclusion was this. The strength of the traditional carving lay in representation of landscape; the way in which the human figure found its place in relation to the landscape. In these landscapes, man and nature were inextricably entwined. This relationship was part of a philosophy or spirituality; the sense of being part of an ongoingness and predictability. There were several works where nature was presented without any intervention of man. In these works an implied human presence and a state of awe and wonder struck the viewer.

I believe that the traditional carvers may be applying these traditional views of man and landscape automatically, without having had the immediate experience with the subject and that specific view of life in the world. They have not had that experience because it is only a memory and memories are always unreliable. They do not contain within them the fuel to generate the new shape, the revitalised work.

China does not have to look outside its borders to find the next step for its sculptors. Traditionally, it is the artist that has been if not the social navigator, then he is, she is, the cartographer, who identifies the changed place by recording it, by shaping it.

Contemporary China is a mystery to me. I believe also that it will remain a mystery to the Chinese people while they hesitate to picture it artistically and particularly, where the greater challenge lies, sculpturally.

This sculptural embodiment of the new China what I was hoping to encounter in my visit to China. I was deeply moved by what I saw. I had a sense of an imminent significant birth; it could be an old new or a new old.

he raw material for new art lies within the extent to which the culture has uprooted itself and needs to find a way of defining itself in its new state. In an explosion of changes in China, we look to find the dust from that explosion still not settled on the ground. In the mad haste for repair, for remaking, there is an atmosphere of bewilderment. Are we falling or are we ascending? We are moving in order that we do not stop to look.

I have a sense there is a hesitation to reflect, because the changes are not complete. It is too early to make a picture. Like with taking a photograph the image is too blurred. We perhaps imagine that the world needs to have slowed down before it can be metaphorically caught.

It is this ongoing state of change which needs to be pictured.

Can a state of change be represented? I believe that the rate and state of change is a continuing condition of China for some time to come. To hesitate or wait therefore is to procrastinate. Your artists and artisans have the skills to integrate and synthesise all these changes; all this brokenness and blurring, which is a thing of beauty. It is a different beauty to that beauty to which traditional carving more often refers. It becomes a beauty only once it has been defined as such by the artists.
I want to see not horses trailing along a glorious remembered valley. I don’t want to see the impossible perfection of nature. There is no scope, at this stage for that kind of spirituality. There is a new life and it is the sculptors of China who must give it shape.

In art we seek to represent a contemporary condition, which builds on the strengths of history. Most contemporary art succeeds in the former; falls down soon after, when it is found that the captured moment was a passing one, when the material itself was not sufficiently and fully consulted in a way that spoke of a deep and real nature.

While my eye was caught by some of the contemporary sculpture I was not so engaged by them. My eye was not invited to linger, to become drenched in the detail, in the nuances of rhythm. I was entertained by the newer works, provoked by clever references, but I was not ‘moved’.
The contemporary works held the clues, supposedly, on how the traditional language may be developed and extended into another life. The questions raised were these.

What is the new life that can be as revered as the old life was revered?

Does the gulf that exists between the old China and the new China mean that revolution within art is obligatory? I believe a modest adjustment is sufficient.

I was not in China long enough to know or to understand what is happening. I know that while there is a rapid state of change and progress, much of the old remains. I was struck by the full life of the Chinese people, by a connectedness between people, by, within the blur of movement and construction dust, people still found time to find a place, a peace in their lives. I noticed a warm affection expressed between people and of course the food, the infinite pleasure of the society around food.

Where once tranquillity defined a measure of ‘reality’, where is the new reality found or, where does the new tranquillity lie? What has the landscape become and how is man configured within it? It is the artist who tells us how. We do not know until we have allowed our artists the time and freedom to configure it.

I believe China will not understand its changes by referring to the way in which the West has deranged itself. Inviting foreign sculptors to make sculptures will not help, nor in the end will it help to invite foreign jurors. I am arguing in this instance for my obsolescence. My argument needs to be presented only once.

Sculpture, whether it be carved, modelled or constructed is the most unforgiving of disciplines. Other media lend themselves to change and innovation dramatically. Sculpture presents a stronger resistance. The demands of material suppress an excitability that painting for example offers.
With sculpture the present is not so readily entertained. Sculpture has therefore largely been spared the upheavals that other media have suffered. Sculpture has not suffered the vulgarisations of ‘Contemporary art’.

In Dong Yang sculpture was presented not only within the limits of a defined history of sculpture. It was further limited by being restricted to wood carving. The bare bones of sculpture were revealed in a way where no amount of ‘sophistication’ could hide whether a work succeeded or failed. This is a most ideal condition for clarity and growth.

I believe that you increase potential when you increase limits. Add choices to become caught in the quagmire.

As with any cultural practice anywhere, there is the issue of how the works, be they paintings, stone carvings or wood carvings, will need to find some market to sustain themselves. I know that it is an issue within the Dong Yang wood carving community that markets need to be established and maintained continually. There will always be a strong market for the traditional wood carving and of those subjects with which that carving is associated. I believe that there will also be a strong market demand for any carving that seeks to give shape to the modern China. Consequently there should be both a financial and artistic benefit to doing the required research, in terms of identifying new subjects and finding the ways in which they can be synthesised or carved.

The risk of traditional carving becoming associated with a craft sensibility will also be averted, the result of which will be that there will be a corresponding re-evaluation of those works according to their artistic as opposed to craft value.

I propose that the traditional practices be more or less maintained; that there continue to be an emphasis on relief carving, which is so appropriate to wood carving and that the use of handtools is appropriate to the way in which the forms in wood carving are revealed. The skills within the workshops need not therefore be altered, with the hierarchies between the stages of carving being maintained.

I said it to my friends in Dong Yang.
Four words only are needed, for all that I have articulated here.
New China. Old methods.

I thank you all once again. While I argue against the benefits of foreign visitors I hope that I shall return for the lessons that I have learnt and for the pleasure that I have had.

Michael Snape

© Michael Snape 1973-2008