Qiu Deshu
Qiu Deshu
Qiu Deshu
Sponsored by
Foreword
I have been an admirer of Qiu Deshu’s work since the early 1980s
and have now been working with him for over twenty years.
His prestigious status in the field of Chinese contemporary
Ink Painting is due both to his initial prominence as an artist
working for the Revolution as a Red Guard, and his subsequent
early career as one of the founders of the ground-breaking
avant-garde Grass Society. His aesthetic trajectory since then
has been one of single-minded experimentation, oblivious of
and indifferent to, the siren voices of the art-market and its
fluctuating fashions.
It is therefore a pleasure to have been able, after numerous
attempts, to convince him to join us here in the West in an
exhibition of this chronological breadth and quality.
We are very grateful to Melissa J. Walt for her thoughtful
introduction which has elegantly elucidated the complex
evolution of Qiu’s varied output over the years and to Michael
Sullivan, the acknowledged doyen of Chinese modern art,
who has written the touching introduction. And finally we
would like to express our warmest appreciation to the generous
sponsor of the exhibition – Coutts – whose support has been
invaluable.
Michael Goedhuis
5
Thoughts about Qiu Deshu
Of how many contemporary artists, Eastern and Western, can it be said that
contemplating their work gives the viewer pure visual pleasure? But if it does,
is that enough? The virtue of the best of Chinese landscape painting, ancient
and modern, is that it hints at a reality that lies beyond the visual image.
With images as visually seductive as those of Qiu Deshu, that inner
quality may not at once be apparent – but it is there, and gives an added depth
to work that may appear at first, to the Western eye at least, as no more than
visually beautiful.
For years Qiu Deshu’s admirers have been familiar with his mountain
landscapes in which his strong forms seem, even when vibrantly colourful,
to be frozen, like ice, in time. But his imagination is very much alive, and in
recent years he has broken free, to let his images to float freely over the paper,
as though by some magic they had been quickened into life.
Qiu Deshu seems, like Joan Miró, to be enjoying himself, and that
sense of playful joy comes through to us. To be on the receiving end is a
delightful experience!
Michael Sullivan
Oxford, September, 2012
Soul of Fissures, 2012
6
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
121 × 60 cm (473/4 × 231/2")
Fissuring – Plum Blossoms, 2004
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
180 × 90 cm (703/4 × 351/2") each panel
9
Melissa J. Walt
The Art of Qiu Deshu
Two Demons, 1984
Mixed media on xuan paper
65 × 61 cm (251/2 × 24")
In the years since 1985, when Chinese artists
were first granted a degree of artistic freedom, the
venerable tradition of ink painting has been subjected to a dizzying array of transformations. The
works of Qiu Deshu, a gifted painter and calligrapher, transcend medium and subject to become
modern iterations that both honour the cultural
heritage of the past, and reject it. Combining
pigment, ink, and paper and then rending and reforming the pieces, Qiu has devised a technique
that reflects his worldview and life experience.
He calls the technique ‘fissuring.’
Qiu Deshu was born in Shanghai in 1948 as
China’s long civil war was nearing its end. His
childhood coincided with a period of consolidation in the years following Liberation in 1949. The
1950s were focussed on recovering from decades
of civil unrest and war, implementing the Chinese Communist Party’s vision, and stabilizing
society and economy. In this environment, Qiu
Deshu’s artistic talents shone early. At school,
teachers recognized his gift; and at home, his parents realized that paper and ink could still their
son’s rambunctious nature. Qiu’s early training
included all aspects of traditional painting, seal
carving and scroll mounting, as well as drawing
and Western-style painting. This exposure to
traditional techniques made an especially strong
impression, as is evident in his mature work.
The Chinese world changed dramatically after
1949, but vestiges of traditional cultural ideals
survived. One of these was a continued affinity
for China’s ancient ink painting tradition. The
social and political landscape of Qiu Deshu’s
youth may have looked unlike anything in
China’s past, but not everyone embraced the
officially-approved socialist realist artistic
agenda. During middle school, Qiu’s parents
hired a private painting tutor who offered their
son the most traditional of painting educations.
Qiu’s tutor subscribed to the ancient pedagogical
technique of learning by copying. In 1963, on
the eve of the political firestorm that ignited the
Cultural Revolution, Qiu copied a work by the
17th century individualist painter Shitao, earning
high praise for it from his tutor. By 1966, such
undertakings were not only politically out of
favour, but perilous.
The defining event for Qiu Deshu’s
generation was the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976). Chairman Mao and
political in-fighting among Communist Party
leaders fuelled this decade of upheaval. Mao
enlisted Qiu’s generation as the vanguard of
this revolution, and charged them with the
obliteration of the Four Olds: old culture, old
customs, old ideas, old habits. Qiu was one of
these dedicated Red Guards, but one whose
artistic abilities were readily re-directed from
copying old masters to producing Cultural
Revolution propaganda: posters, cartoons, prints,
and portraits extolling revolutionary themes
and Chairman Mao himself. In 1968, Qiu was
assigned to a factory, where his jobs included
such physically demanding labour as shovelling
coal. By virtue of this factory assignment, Qiu
became a ‘worker,’ who, along with peasants
and soldiers were venerated during the Cultural
Revolution. Ironically, this classification also
furthered Qiu’s artistic ambitions. As a workerartist, he enjoyed special art classes and training
opportunities. His growing reputation also led
to his participation in a number of high-profile
projects and exhibitions.
Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled
a major shift in official attitudes toward art
and politics. The ensuing years were ones of
reflection, as people sought to make sense of
the previous ten years. Throughout China,
young artists whose experiences had centred
11
on producing politically-charged images of the
Cultural Revolution, began to search for new
means of expression. In 1977, Qiu was re-assigned
to a local cultural centre. From factory worker to
cultural worker, Qiu was among this searching
and disillusioned generation.
In late 1979, Qiu and eleven colleagues,
established an informal art society. First calling
themselves the ‘Independent Painters’ Group,’ a
name deemed too political for official tastes, they
became the ‘Grass Society’ (Caocao hua she, 草草
畫社). This seemingly innocent name-change,
however, carried its own loaded connotations,
meant to associate the artists with small weeds
that flourish – overlooked and ubiquitous. In
February 1980, a controversial exhibition of
Caocao art ran briefly at the cultural center
where Qiu worked. The group’s commitment
to contemporary iterations of ink painting was
less problematical for Party officials than their
interest in abstraction and nudes – ideological
landmines in official art circles. The group’s
goal – independence of spirit, technique, and
style – made Qiu a target of official criticism, and
led to a dark emotional period for him. But from
this adversity emerged renewed commitment to
expressing his inner landscape.
Along with life experience, ancient philosophy
– ironically, among the traditions Qiu and his
generation had tried to destroy – plays a key
role in animating Qiu’s work. Traces of China’s
traditional belief systems endured after 1949,
and throughout his childhood, Qiu Deshu’s
parents maintained their Buddhist faith. Qiu
accompanied them on regular visits to make
temple offerings. During the Cultural Revolution,
when the ‘Little Red Book’ of Chairman Mao’s
sayings was ubiquitous, Qiu supplemented this
required reading with his own extracurricular
reading of Buddhist sutras. It is to the sutras now
that his work seems most indebted.
The first Noble Truth of Buddhism teaches
that life is suffering – something Qiu experienced
(and witnessed) routinely during the Cultural
Revolution. Buddhism also addresses the
impermanence and illusory nature of existence.
In the early 1980s, Qiu experimented with tearing
and re-assembling his paintings. The process of
12
creation, destruction, and re-creation conveyed
aspects of the artist’s experiences and inner life.
With this ‘fissuring’ technique, Qiu reinforces the
idea of impermanence, and the reconfiguring of
one thing into another underscores the Buddhist
belief in the emptiness of form.
If the philosophical foundations of Qiu Deshu’s
art draw on traditional belief systems, so is his
work indebted to the Chinese landscape tradition.
Where brush and ink once defined the forms of
landscape, Qiu uses ink, colour, and paper in a
collage-like process indebted to the techniques
used for mounting scrolls. But for Qiu, mounting is central to the creative process, not merely
a means to preserve and display a painting. The
resulting works, from primordial rock to monumental precipice, share metaphysical space with
Song dynasty masters like Guo Xi, Fan Kuan, and
Ma Yuan. The monumental landscapes and misty
lyrical scenes of the past closely reflected Daoist
ideas and imagery, as do Qiu’s Big Landscape No. 6
(2001) and Mountainscape I (2004).
Daoism maintains that the universe is in a
constant state of flux, from form to formlessness and back again. The physical landscape was
considered the visible manifestation of the Dao,
and painters sought to express the cosmic vitality
that animates the world and its spirit essence (qi).
Qiu transforms the language of landscape
into a contemporary idiom of creative expression (Fissuring – Red Rock and Snowy Mountain,
2011). He describes a breakthrough moment in
1982. During an intense period of criticism and
struggle after the Caocao exhibition, one day he
glanced down and at once became fully aware of
cracks on the ground. In them he saw his own
position mirrored; they seemed like eyes staring
silently upward. From this ordinary moment of
observation of something he had always seen
but never been truly aware of, an extraordinary
surge of creativity was sparked. Qiu Deshu’s
imagination saw beyond the cracks in the ground
to a new way of creation, of light where there
had been bleakness, of form where before there
had been only formlessness. For the viewer, it
is a universe of infinite fascination, one which
challenges us by revealing much – and obscuring
even more.
Fissuring – Red Rock and
Snowy Mountain, 2011
Acrylic and xuan paper on canvas
182 × 182 cm (715/8 × 715/8")
Calligraphy No.6, 2000-2001
Ink and acrylic on xuan
paper and canvas
238 × 60 cm (94 × 231/2")
(opposite page: detail)
14
Mountainscape (red), 2005
Ink, acrylic and xuan paper on canvas
200 × 360 cm (783/4 × 1413/4")
Fissuring – Landscape, 2012
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
182 × 182 cm (713/4 × 713/4")
Substance, Self-Consciousness:
Self Portrait, 1982
18
Ink and red ink paste on xuan paper
130 × 66 cm (51× 26")
Animal Nature, 1990
Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
150 × 170 cm (59 × 67")
(opposite page: detail)
20
23
Five-Panel Mountainscape, 2005
Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
210 × 125.5 cm (821/2 × 491/2") each panel
24
25
Fissuring – Face to Face, 1989
Ink, acrylic and red ink paste on xuan paper
95 × 112 cm (371/2 × 44")
(opposite page: detail)
26
27
Mountainscape I, 2004
Ink on xuan paper and cardboard
122 × 244 cm (48 × 96")
29
Fissuring – Landscape No.8, 2004 – 2008
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
121 × 243 cm (473/4 × 951/2")
Fissuring – Landscape, 2012
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
156 × 200 cm (615/8 × 7811/16")
30
31
Fissuring – Sublimation No.3, 2009-2010
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
240 × 120 cm (941/2 × 471/4")
(opposite page: detail)
Buddhist Sublime, 1993
Ink and red ink paste on
xuan paper and canvas
244 × 146 cm (96 × 521/2")
Cleft of Change – Origin –
Sublimation, 1997
Ink and acrylic on xuan
paper and canvas
240 × 140 cm (941/2 × 551/8")
Chanting, Fissuring No.8, 2011
Acrylic and xuan paper on canvas
80 × 160 cm (311/2 × 63")
37
Fissuring – My Stamp, 199o
Fissuring – Distant View of Pingpo, 1994-1995
Mixed media on xuan paper
67 × 130 cm (261/2 × 51")
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
74 × 132 cm (29 × 52")
38
39
Self-Portrait (Spirit), 1997-1998
Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
180 × 360 cm (703/4 × 1411/2")
41
Big Landscape No. 6, 2001
Ink and acrylic on xuan
paper and canvas
249 × 122 cm (98 × 48")
(opposite page: detail)
42
Man and the Moon, 1988
Ink and acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
76 × 102 cm (30 × 40")
(opposite page: detail)
45
Fissuring – Landscape, 2012
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
182 × 182 cm (713/4 × 713/4")
Soul of Fissures, 2012
46
Acrylic on xuan paper and canvas
121 × 60 cm (48 × 231/2")
Sponsored by
© Michael Goedhuis, 2012. No part of this publication
may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without
the prior permission of the publisher.
All images reproduced with permission
Design: Ornan Rotem
Print and binding: Graphicom SRL, Verona
Photography: Jaron James Photography
MICHAEL GOEDHUIS PUBLISHING
London 2012
61 Cadogan Square, Flat 3
London SW1X 0HZ
T +44 (0) 20 7823 1395
F +44 (0) 20 7823 2794
[email protected]
www.michaelgoedhuis.com