Yi Ying
The prints of Zhang Minjie can be interpreted from different perspectives, such as the regional culture, the print language, the formal structure and the spiritual implicature. His works may produce diverse meanings in different contexts. In the trend of contemporary international culture, for example, his works are labeled as postmodernism which is neither a criterion of value nor an argument of theoretical category here. Rather, it is an analysis of non-modernism after the stage of modernism.
Among all traditional arts, the development of the print art is the most synchronous with that of the modern science and technology. This can be proved in the successful application of modern industrial materials, modern printing technology, commercial art making and computer imaging technology to print art, which in turn reflects the technical, material and duplicate nature of the modern society. However, the traditional humanist spirit and the sentiments expressed by people to coordinate the society with nature are overwhelmed by technologies. Against this background, one may find some outstanding features of Mr. Zhan, which, though not accepted by modernism, finally came back into the spotlight as the spiritual value in the era of postmodernism. This phenomenon is not simple nostalgia since the civilization cannot retrogress; however, it actually reflects the desire of humans to regain the primeval power which has been compromised in the progress of civilization. In retrospect, the most profound part of Mr. Zhang’s prints is exactly the primeval power of summoning life. When modern people are gradually drifting away from nature and the original human nature in improved modern means of transport, communication equipment and living space, they are always desperate to return to human nature and retrieve the spiritual homeland in one way or another. “Return” here has double meanings, the first of which being the original, folk, regional and natural forms in terms of themes or visual images, just like the features used to describe childhood when human nature develops freely, and the second being a kind of spiritual power contained in these forms instead of a pure exhibition of style and rural culture which is of course not difficult to achieve. Since the 1980s, the Chinese painting had been labeled as “local realism” for a long time before the advent of the commercial genre paintings which bring little practical significance of post-modernism or post-industrialism as it only illustrates a sentimental and exotic flavor. Therefore, one can say that Mr. Zhang’s prints actually inherit the style of primitivism separated from the local paintings as a part of China’s modern art movement in the mid-1980s. However, rather than adopting the abstract transfiguration, the expressionist techniques or other methods, Mr. Zhang sticks to realism and always pursues and even sublimates the theme and meaning of the prints in concrete images and scenes.
The power of art lies in demonstration rather than in explanation. Mr. Zhang chose the themes of horses, rural dances and folk customs in creating his local prints without explaining any themes or motives of the describable scenes and stories. He covered themes with a modern consciousness by processing forms of creation, and finally lifted them out of countryside and folk custom targeting at human primeval power. The modern consciousness of Mr. Zhang is mainly embodied through the form, i.e. that form similar to the cubism constitutes his style. In the history of western modern art, cubism and primitivism are closely linked with each other as cubism can discover from the primitive art the roughness and the structure absent in the western academic art while the geometric structures coincide with the visual experience of the modern industrial society. Mr. Zhang’s preference for cubism is shown in the relation between the image construction and the painting. He depicts unadorned and clumsy humans in sculptured geometric structures with the expression of conciseness in printings. Besides, he highlights the contrast among large diagonals, perpendicular lines and horizontal lines in his composition so much that themes of dances seem to be rough and heavy. What should be pointed out is that for Mr. Zhang the importance of cubism is to provide a pair of modernist eyes and to strengthen the primitive spiritual meaning of themes. He does not emphasize the forms like cubists but depicts the folk themes in the light of cubism. In this way, he ultimately helps people touch a life closest to nature, an existence that people living in the civilization of cities, computers and telecommunications can never encounter.
From this perspective, although Mr. Zhang adopts some modernist techniques, he aims to jump out of the mistakes of modernism and to focus on the natural form of humans. He is consolidating this form in the language of modern art. The lithograph Dancing on the Square is actually a series of fictional scenes of folk customs in which the artist puts the honest and clumsy farmers in a sportive state. This kind of stage activity is not simply the thriving power, but the multifaceted symbols rather. Since then, themes have possessed a purpose of purposelessness. In Dancing on the Square No.1, most of the farmers, divided into two crowded square formations, run to the opposite sides out of the frame , and others in loose groups pass through the square formations along the diagonals. From the perspective of composition, the two formations in the presupposed relation of tension seem to be confronting each other with their surging vitality yet diagonal farmers obviously play the role of buffer, forming fluctuation and rhythm of power. Also, farmers in the tableau are neither dancing nor letting off steam. In fact, the energy of expansionary force has been generated from the work of intensified expression of form. Judging the whole work, one may find that Mr. Zhang manages to highlight human nature by depicting their free dancing. In the sense of life meaning, his works successfully return to nature and the underlying themes are pronounced thereby.
Documents of Fine Arts. Vol 1(1996)