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Zhang Hongtu is a true New Yorker. He tells you not only what subway to take to his studio, but on what end of the train to get off so that you will emerge from the most efficient exit. He is an avid museumgoer. And he is addicted to bagels and not just any Essa bagels, the city s best. His studio is in Williamsburg, the area of Brooklyn that boasts New York s hippest young starving artists (sporting Chinese tattoos and the occasional Mao jacket). Given his surroundings and his brassy artistic past, Zhang s current work may seem tame. Don t be fooled. Zhang is a small, energetic man with bright eyes and loads of big ideas. "Chinese painting goes against [what we in the West associate with] painting," he begins. "The definition of painting is different. In traditional Chinese painting, color was not important; there wasn t light and shadow, no three-dimensional perspective, and no strong, personal brushwork. It is misleading to use the word painting. I say shanshui ("mountain, water") painting, not landscape painting. Mountain and water are always a pair, like space and time, movement and stillness, yin and yang. Water is moving, mountains are still. Since I left China, I have seen Chinese painting as philosophy. As Su Dongbo s poem says, You don t know the shape of the mountain because you are inside it. You only know the shape of it with distance. "Zhang darts around his studio, pulling huge canvases out from behind others, searching for one that will illustrate each point he makes. Similar to looking at the original Chinese masterpieces on which these pieces are based, he says, "you don t have to focus on one perspective, like in Western painting. We [Chinese] don t look at paintings, we read paintings top to bottom, left to right. Western paintings are more realistic. It s like seeing a landscape through a window. Western viewers may at first feel disoriented upon looking at these pieces. It takes time to find their position." Zhang calls his most recent body of work "Repaint Chinese Shan Shui Painting." In each painting, he copies a classic Chinese landscape painting, known as shanshui ("mountain, water"), in famous European impressionist styles. "I have matched Dong Qichang, a Ming Dynasty painter who uses a lot of geometric shapes, with Cézanne. Shi Tou, who is more emotional and has distinctive original line work, works well with van Gogh." Yuan Dynasty painter Zhao Mengfu s depiction of a rock is reminiscent of the haystacks that Monet painted at different times of day. Zhang, in the same way, has painted rock at three times of day. Zhang also talks about the fundamental differences between Chinese and Western painting traditions: "Western painters depend on nature. But for Chinese painters, it is just a reference. Not many people sketch. They go back to the studio and paint from their imagination. They rearrange it by themselves. There is always a title to tell you where this view comes from, but it s actually not important. The place is not important: what s important is the painting. When you re making the image of a mountain it s a kind of freedom you don t have to make exactly a mountain. In Chinese art school, when I grew up, we learned both Chinese tradition and Western technique. For the Chinese part we copied the masterpieces. We didn t go to nature to paint anything." Zhang s biggest challenge with "Repaint Shan Shui" is in convincingly capturing each impressionist s particular style. To be successful, he says, "I have to adopt the brushwork and take on the emotion while painting." Zhang was trained as a painter at Beijing s prestigious Central Academy of Arts and Crafts during the time when "impressionism and post-impressionism were considered bourgeois, decadent art. We only studied socialist realism. But at that time, I knew I liked impressionism. I saw some books. I did a lot on my own outside of school." In reflecting upon which impressionist style has been the most difficult to imitate, Zhang chuckles and says, "Cézanne is quicker, maybe. But you have to get the color and brushwork exactly right at the beginning. Monet you can change all the time it has more layers. Maybe I didn t spend as much time painting Cézanne, but more time studying [him] in the museum." On first viewing the Repaint Shan Shui
series, one marvels at Zhang s masterly technique and the
majestic, serene pastorals. But this response is only one part
of what the works are about. Their real power is discovered on
closer examination of the seals and calligraphy. Many of the seals
from the original Chinese works have been recreated on the paintings
and he has also added his own. He tells buyers, "If I sell
you my painting, you have a right to add a seal. [The painting]
becomes a history book." Chinese calligraphy also appears along the edges of the paintings, as they would in traditional Chinese pieces. Zhang uses a brush and thinned oil to make the calligraphy look like the ink of the originals. Sometimes the calligraphy is not very clear; it seems to melt into the paintings. The writing on Zhao Mengfu Monet, Noon reads: Thank you for coming so close in order to read this calligraphy. You must be able to understand Chinese, right? However, have you noticed something truly unfortunate has happened? When you come close enough to be able to read these words, which is to say just at this moment you lose the possibility of enjoying the painting as a whole. So...please step back five or six steps (but be careful not to bump into anyone or anything behind you!) Find what you feel to be an appropriate distance and angle, and shift your attention from these words to the painting. Thank you for your attention. Not everyone has responded positively to this playfulness. Zhang says that sometimes, "Chinese artists come here and say, you can t treat Chinese painting this way. For them it is kind of abuse of Chinese painting." He explains that Chinese painting, especially after the Song Dynasty was elite, scholarly painting, done in mostly black and white: it was various forms of popular culture like posters that had color. Equally dismissive was an impressionist scholar who saw the work and thought it was a joke. "For him, the impressionists are to be worshipped. But you change it to something different it is something like abuse. It doesn t show respect to the originals." Zhang feels he is continuing tradition: "For Chinese painters, traditionally, to copy an ancient master was the most important way to learn the painting, the technique, to understand it. In this way, I m still copying, but from today s view. When Ming Dynasty painters copied Song Dynasty painters, they also reinterpreted the paintings it was already different. So I m copying the paintings with my own background. So that s the same. This is traditional. I m the one who is continuing the tradition, not abusing or breaking with tradition." The calligraphy on Wang Hui - Monet #2 reads: Scholars consider Wang Hui s lifework to have been based on the copying of ancient masters, in such a way that he learned to master the techniques of the many great artists since the Song and Yuan dynasties. Wang Hui himself said, It would be a great accomplishment to have combined the lines of the Yuan, the composition of the Song and the magnificence of the Tang. Is it not all the more marvelous to add to that the color of the French impressionists? Zhang mentions the famous Song Dynasty painting Zaochun ("early spring"), which he has recreated in van Gogh s style. "The original had no color. You get the feeling from the name." He has added the color that impressionists would use "to give the feeling of spring. If you are familiar with the Chinese part, you will get the sense that it is a Chinese painting, but if Western people look at it, they will think it is van Gogh, but it s not van Gogh. [Chinese people will say,] I know this painting, but the color s wrong. Any time Chinese people look at these paintings they will see color, lighting. This is my ambition, if I have an ambition to [make them] see and think differently." Though Zhang claims to be following hallowed tradition, he is well aware of doing it in his own way: "It is high art from both the Chinese and Western perspective. But my attitude is different. I play with high art. So that s why not everybody likes it. Because it s more like a pop art attitude. Both impressionism and ancient Chinese art are now part of pop culture. In China, if you are a very conservative Chinese painter, you still worship Chinese painting. But the common people, they don t have any idea about it. Nobody decorates their room in Chinese style, they put something of Western culture: even the New Year paintings [are Western]. It s different now. I put high culture together with a pop art attitude." The honor that Zhang pays to the two painting traditions, combined with a dismissal of the sacredness of high art, may seem inconsistent and even shocking. But such rich contradiction and irreverence is nothing new in Zhang s work. Zhang Hongtu came to New York in 1982 with his wife and son, earlier than many of the Chinese artists who now live here. He was fleeing horrible memories of the Cultural Revolution and was eager to make an entirely new life for himself in the United States. Before 1989, he was trying to forget his past. But the tragedy at Tiananmen Square refocused his attention on his country and questions of his own identity. He remembers following every moment of the student protests with his Chinese friends. One episode that particularly struck him was when "three Hunanese threw eggs filled with paint at the Mao painting in the square and were immediately sentenced to life, twenty-, and sixteen-year sentences. The student protesters also joined in condemning these men. They were siding with the authorities. Motivated by this, he created a cut-out portrait of Mao with student leader Wuer Kaixi s image inside. After living outside of China, he had come to believe that Mao and the establishment were so pervasive in China that even the protesters were shaped by him. They could only imagine as much as the system let them. Zhang had already experimented with Mao s image, in pieces such as Quickoats Mao, but it was after the Tiananmen tragedy that he made Mao the main thrust of his work. "When I first began playing with his image, I felt guilty, like it was a sin. Mao was a god in China even after he died. Taxi drivers hang his image to protect against accidents." He felt he had to "pull Mao s image down from heaven." In 1990, Zhang s friend with a similar name, Zhang Hongnian, also a painter from Beijing living in New York, traveled back to China. "He was stopped at the customs office. They called him my name, because of the Mao paintings that were being published in many magazines and newspapers. He later got released. But this was a very strong message to me. So I didn t go back until 1997." Zhang could have no question about the import of his work after that. In 1998, Zhang made his last Mao piece. It has nine panels: "I repeated the same image of Mao in different artistic styles: pointillism, impressionism, Pi-casso, Magritte, minimal art, pop art, my own style (a cut-out with soy sauce). This was the beginning of my new work. I was part of the conceptual artists. I can recycle styles. I can give a new life to old styles." This was the bridge into his current work. He next painted Song Dynasty master Fan Kuan s classic Xishan Siyuntu. This had been the painting that was to be featured in the Metropolitan Museum s 1996 exhibit of works from the Taipei Palace Museum. But it wasn t shipped after protests in Taiwan and concern about damage. Zhang repainted it twice, once in van Gogh s style and once in Cézanne s. Zhang has no regrets about leaving Mao behind. "In China lots of people are now doing Mao s image. Mao was psychotherapy for me. Now I m OK so I stopped. I don t have a strange feeling about Mao anymore. Anyway, I ve left China for too long I don t have enough information about the situation there. I m out. I m a New Yorker. I have more freedom." Although he talks of New York as his home, Zhang still does not feel part of American society: "After many years of living in New York I still cannot fit myself into this society. I still feel like an outsider. Like an other . Your language problems, your social relationships, cultural backgrounds, lifestyles they are different from people born here. [I m] even different from my son he came here when he was eight years old. But as an artist, I also want my work to have a relationship to society. I want to concern myself with social issues, so that s why I used Mao s image. But since I left China, I don t think I can really touch more sensitive points of today s China, because I left so long ago. At the same time, I don t think I can really deal with the social issues that happen here." Zhang does not bemoan his dual outsider status: "People talk about the negative sides of globalization. But it is just reality. The negative side is a loss of identity. But the positive side is that we learn more about each other." This is where his current work fits in: "I can only do shanshui here, today. Because people mix today. This is the future of the world. It is a new phenomenon." Zhang s openness and optimism is refreshing. Page of Christie s Catalogue 1998 is a mock Christie s auction catalogue page advertising a bronzed Big Mac container. Another page is a Ming vase in the shape of a Coke bottle. When asked if he is concerned about American companies taking over China, if there is inequality in this globalization, he shakes his head. "I don t judge this kind of situation this way. This is reality. People will judge themselves. In China there are 500 McDonalds, but [there are] 50,000 Chinese restaurants in America! This is today s world. Cultures cross each other. People understand each other s cultures better. If I m eating a hamburger in McDonalds in China next to an American soldier, I ll talk to him, to get to know him, not to fight with him. So I don t want to criticize McDonalds and Coke. Of course the businessmen want to make money. For us, we have no choice. We have to accept it positively, think about this situation positively." Zhang is talking about a lesson that should be learned by Americans and Chinese, just as his shanshui paintings can be appreciated by both Americans and Chinese: drawing on Western and Chinese traditions allows an entry point for both. And yet, Zhang continues to be talking first and foremost to Chinese, those who have had experiences similar to his. Just as he wants Chinese to see painting in a new way, when talking about cultural openness, he adds, "Maybe not so many people say my culture is better than your culture, but under communism people still have this kind of mentality. When I was young in China, I was taught Chinese history is the best, the longest. Since I came here I have believed that every culture has a different value. You can t compare which is better or, worse only different." Ironically, Zhang s earlier Mao work may prove more accessible to Western viewers. His artsy Williamstown neighbors, though they haven t lived with Mao, would certainly appreciate Zhang s earlier bold, politically subversive work and the immediate punch it packs. "Repaint Shan Shui," in comparison, seems subdued and even innocuous. It doesn t jolt the uninitiated. After spending time talking with Zhang, though, it is the Mao works that feel somewhat less complete. "Repaint Shan Shui" resonates deeply when appreciating who Zhang is as a Chinese artist who has lived in America for almost twenty years. He continues to topple gods, but here they are those of his craft, and he is giving homage to them at the same time as he questions their infallibility. Of course, the most compelling reason to take on the questions that Zhang raises is that he asks them smiling, and often giggling. "It is with humor that you draw people into your work," he says. He entices us into considering things in a new way, and also reckoning with things once condemned. This is what he is doing himself. "Even though I was trained as a painter, for many years I believed painting was dead that there was nothing more you can do with it. But now I ve come back to painting. It s a certain way to come back to what I learned before, but with a new concept. Technically, it s the same brush, but conceptually it s different." And while it is his ideas about art and culture that have brought him back to painting, it is also the technical challenge that keeps him working: "The concept comes first this is a conceptual painting. [But it is] not like Popcorn Mao, [where] if I have the idea, I ve already finished it. Painting is different. I have to learn the technique. That is why I continue to do it because I want to get better." It is not just painting skills that Zhang is getting better at. It is seeing more about the subtleties of the cultures he has lived within and between. He sets a high bar for exploration and openness, which he asks us to meet. This article is based on conversations with Zhang Hongtu in October and November of 2000. To see more of Zhang Hongtu s work, visit his website <www.momao.com>. Yale-China Review
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