Foreword

A polyphonic, pluralistic and lively world

There is no doubt that Wang Wangwang’s portrait art is creative in a unique and powerful way, which can be seen in at least two spheres: the technical and the spiritual. The technical sphere seems easy to understand, that is, as a mature artist, he has the consummate skills that allow him to traverse the complex and diversified worlds of art and different means of expression with ease, presenting the artistic reality in the fashion of Bach’s polyphony and multi-dimensionality. On the practical level, however, it is not as simple as it seems, with the implied profound and complicated generative principle. For a long time, Wang Wangwang was known as a professional graphic designer, as well as a poet and painter. To a certain extent, this would be enough for an artist who works with relatively simple means of expression and presentation, even for the artistic career in one’s entire life. Yet it is obvious that Wang Wangwang is not satisfied with the artistic achievements and means of expression he has already created. He needs to improve his artistic creativity in a more comprehensive way, and he needs more artistic outlets and a more complex space for his artistic life. I think this is what has motivated his continuous exploration and breakthrough. It is with such a creative impulse and creative drive that he has made himself a more versatile and creative artist. This experimental spirit is indeed a rare quality for an artist, and many outstanding artists’ secret of their creativity. This is fully reflected in Wang Wangwang’s portraits representing human civilization.

In terms of the complexity and diversity of Wang Wangwang’s artistic achievements, I would rather see his creations as a kind of conceptual art that goes beyond the boundaries of different artistic paradigms. This kind of conceptual art, like the work of Stefan Zweig, at least draws our attention to some stellar moments of humankind (Sternstunden der Menschheit). This is his secret; this is one of the major reasons why he is able to employ many means of expression, media and forms, and traverse different artistic languages. Obviously, the concepts allow him to stand in a higher position to observe, examine, and represent the world, making his artistic creation free to break through the boundaries of time, space and art, and enabling him to connect important thinkers, writers, artists and great people of human civilization together to form a world of artistic creativity. “We necessarily express ourselves by means of words and we usually think in terms of space,” wrote Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. Wang Wangwang is able to place these great souls in a space of contemplation based on the concepts. The means and materials he uses include marker pens, oil pastels, ink, the computer, among others, which may seem simple but are capable of expressing rich and profound meaning in sketchy forms. It seems that they can easily create an artistic world that connects languages of the world and the spirit of mankind.

In what specific ways is his art world generated? This is one of the questions I want to emphasize here. To put it in other ways: What spiritual background has generated and supported Wang Wangwang’s artistic world? In his portrait art, by what principles andtechniques are the lines generated in the styles of Chinese calligraphy, Gustave Mahler, Pierre Boulez, and Henri Matisse? How did the concept featuring the nature of “Pop Art” represented in the computer-generated images and the images in a variety of media form? What is the source of the distinct humanistic, literary and poetic sentiments that pervade the images? Specifically, I think it may be related to his earlier achievements in artistic design. He was already familiar with the way of thinking in graphic design;on this basis, he takes full advantage of various forms and resources, including the use of images, paintings, graphic design, multi-media art, digital technology, and so on, to transform the specific and the abstract into the universal. Thus the graphic plane is developed into a multi-dimensional space, shaping a completely open artistic ecology with its spiritual orientation. What I find the most crucial here is the transformation of artistic forms and the metaphysical and philosophical conceptualization of art and ideas, which refine and sublimate the human spirit through the series of portrait art. Based on the artistic reality created by Wang Wangwang, it is necessary to reiterate here an important concept, namely the abstraction of art. In the light of artistic concepts, Wang Wangwang has succeeded in abstracting the spectrum and geographic distribution of the human spirit, showing the direction to an open and infinite world. This is one of the most important reasons why Wang Wangwang’s creation and exploration in art has been widely recognized.

According to Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri, “Abstraction is our nature;abstraction is the nature of our work; and abstraction is the only community of ourexistence.” I think this is the reality that each of us faces every day, and it is also the reality that Wang Wangwang faces every day in his artistic creation. At every moment, we constantly come to our own conclusions about our lives in varying degrees of abstraction and refinement.

The last thing I would like to emphasize in particular here is the level of spirituality achieved by the art of Wang Wangwang and the spiritual eternity implied in it, that is, the spiritual sphere of his creativity mentioned at the beginning. I find it impossible to separate Wang Wangwang’s spiritual background from his prolific creation of works of art with great spiritual coherence and unity. The humanistic, literary and poetic sensations that pervade his works show that Wang Wangwang the artist cannot be distinguished from Wang Wangwang the poet. His works easily remind the viewer of Chinese classic masters such as Qu Yuan, Li Bai and Du Fu, who echo remotely with the masters of the humanistic spirit that he portrays, such as Hugo, Goethe, Pound, Paul Celan, Proust, Kafka, among others. These images undoubtedly suggest association with human thoughts, with the minds that contemplate upon humanity— Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schopenhauer, John Locke, and others. In this sense, Wang Wangwang is also a brilliant thinker. The images of musicians such as Bach, Beethoven, Ravel and Liszt interspersed among them in turn bring a melodic quality to his portrait series. Considering Wang Wangwang’s identity as an artist, there is no need to particularly point out the artistic impact and higher spirituality presented in the images of Da Vinci, Picasso, Van Gogh, etc., which best embody his ontological expression of art—Wang Wangwang has already fully conversed and resonated with these noble souls in the dimension of the “narrator of the human spirit”. With the flying and dancing lines, he heartily expresses the qualities of a true artist, which undoubtedly is the fundamental dimension that supports Wang Wangwang’s spiritual world, enabling the world of art presented by him to be profound and boundless, to even go beyond the boundaries of humanism, thus showing the direction to a world of absolute and ultimate values.

Admittedly, through continuous artistic practice and exploration, Wang Wangwang has created a series of portraits that have traversed the boundaries of art, which steadily represents human civilization in images, illustrating the spectrum of the history of human culture and portraying the portrait of human spirit. What he has created is a polyphonic, pluralistic and lively world, clearly displaying the lineage of the human spirit that has been passed on from one generation to the next, which would touch the heart of every viewer. Such a distinctive and creative spiritual world, I believe, is beneficial and evocative for everyone in our world.

Jidi Majia

October 15, 2022

(The author, a representative Chinese poet with international influence, is a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and was elected vice-chair in the ninth national congress of the China Writers Association.)