大道无极——赵无极的艺术世界｜多米尼克•德•维尔潘：二十一世纪的先锋（中） - 动态

ZAO WOU-KI: PIONEER OF THE 21ST CENTURY

赵无极：二十一世纪的先锋

Dominique de Villepin

（多米尼克•德•维尔潘）

General Advisor of Centennial Retrospective Exhibition of Zao Wou-Ki

Former Prime Minister of France, Honorary Chairman of the Foundation for Art and Culture

赵无极百年回顾特展总顾问

法国前总理、FAC艺术文化基金会名誉主席

At the sources of the revival of Chinese art

中国艺术复兴的源泉

But it would be a mistake to believe that Zao Wou-Ki’s pictorial adventure is a solitary adventure. He participates directly in the revival of Chinese art. And it would be a mistake to believe, as we sometimes think in the West, that the future lies in seeking compromises, in seeking a synthesis of Western modern art with Chinese art. On the contrary, I believe that it is in our mutual interest to maintain a confrontation of views, a clash of opposites, from which something new and the unknown can emerge.

如果我们认为赵无极的绘画冒险是一次孤独的冒险，那就大错特错了。他直接参与了中国艺术的复兴。如果我们像西方人有时所想的那样，认为未来在于寻求妥协，在于寻求西方现代艺术与中国艺术的融合，那就错了。恰恰相反，我认为我们需要保持多元化的观点，听取不同的声音，从中了解和学习到新的和未知的东西，东西方均可受益。

《锡耶纳广场》（Piazza Siena）

1951年，布面油画，50 × 45.5 cm

M+博物馆藏，中国香港，2020年赵善美女士捐赠

Among the pioneers of the revival we must mention the giant Qi Baishi, whose powerful gestures succeed, for a moment at least, in uniting Western-inspired modernity with Eastern tradition. Zao Wou-Ki's work is also part of the New Culture movement, in the wake of the May 4th Movement, with artists like Li Tiefu, Yan Wenliang, Xu Beihong and of course Lin Fengmian who was his teacher and paved the way for him in France. With his detour to the West, Zao Wou-Ki himself belongs to a very diverse group of pioneers, all of whom passed through Paris, such as Sanyu, Chu Teh-Chun, or Walasse Ting who multiplied the bridges with the West. And if it took time for Zao Wou-Ki to rediscover China, it also took a long journey to allow China to reclaim Zao Wou-Ki, in the central role of bridge-builder and pathfinder between the two worlds.

在众多开拓者中，我们必须提到齐白石，他在一段时间内成功地将西方的现代性与东方的传统结合起来。赵无极的作品也是五四运动之后新文化运动的一部分，与李铁夫、颜文樑、徐悲鸿和林风眠等艺术家的作品齐名。林风眠指导过赵无极，也是他前往法国的引路人。赵无极转向西方，成为先锋艺术家的一员。常玉、朱德群和丁雄泉等都是先锋艺术家的一员，都曾去过巴黎，他们与赵无极一同建立起连接东西方艺术的桥梁。如果说赵无极重新审视中国需要时间，那么让中国重新认识赵无极，让他成为两个世界之间关键的桥梁搭建者和探路者，也需要一段漫长的旅程。

After the 1983 exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing, he taught for a month here in 1985. Everything changed and accelerated at the turn of the 2000s, with the major retrospective exhibition in Shanghai in 1998, with the Suzhou Exhibition in 2006 and the dialogue with younger artists, such as Xu Bing and Cai Guo-Qiang. He dreamed of this exhibition opening today in Hangzhou, which is at the starting point of his artistic vocation and which he loved so much. It was here that he began the long journey that allowed him, from Paris, around the world, to become“authentically” and fully a Chinese painter.

1983年，在北京中国国家博物馆举办展览后，他于1985年在此任教了一个月。1998年在上海举行了大型回顾展，2006年在苏州举办了展览，赵无极通过作品与徐冰、蔡国强等年轻艺家成功对话。他憧憬着这个如今将在杭州开幕的展览，杭州是他艺术生涯的起点，也是他深爱的地方，也正是在这里，他开始了漫长的旅程，从巴黎到世界各地，成为一名“地地道道”的中国艺术家。

《无题》

1970年，纸本水墨，28 × 27.5 cm

赛努奇博物馆藏，法国巴黎，© Adagp, Paris

Looking at Zao Wou-Ki’s work from both ends, from China and from France, from the end and from the beginning, allows us to free ourselves from a number of false interpretations:

我们必须从中国和法国两个视角来欣赏赵无极的作品，看到他的艺术起点和终点彼此交织，这样才能摆脱偏见与误解：

It is a chance to circumvent the false problem of the transition to abstraction. The question is not indeed, for Chinese painting, the figure but the stake of representation, the capture of life, the resonance of breath and the embodiment of line. And if Zao Wou-Ki turned away from what had become Chinese painting in the mid-thirties, it is indeed because he was worried about the dead image, about a loss of vital impetus through imitation. He then took the lessons from the many variations in the bronzes of the Shang and Zhou dynasties. He also drew inspiration from certain Tang or Song paintings. Abstraction on this path is the fulfillment of Shitao’s teaching, the search for the "without trace" which only captures the resonance of what passes through things, flooding and irrigating them to arrive at the true image, as Mi Fu invites us "not breaking with the trace".

首先，这是一个回避抽象之类的伪命题的机会。对中国画来说，问题不是人物，而是如何表现生命的捕捉、呼吸的共鸣和线条的体现。如果赵无极在30年代中期放弃了中国画，那确实是因为他担心形象死气沉沉，担心由于过度模仿失去生命力。于是，他从商周青铜器和唐宋绘画中汲取灵感。正如石涛提及的“无迹”，即只捕捉那转瞬即逝的、滋养和灌溉万物的共鸣，最终达到真实的形象，也就是米芾所说的“绝迹天机”。

It is also a chance to move beyond the question of the painter as demiurge competing with nature and the divine. Chinese painting is more concerned with participation in the world and the revelation of reality. By immersing us in primitive chaos, capturing the brilliance of reality through the clash of colors and forms, Zao Wou-Ki takes us back to the sources and traces a path with his painting.

其次，这是画家以造物主的身份与自然和神明竞争的机会。中国画更注重入世，揭示与现实的关系。赵无极通过绘画将我们带入一种混沌但充满生命力和原始力量的体验中，通过色彩和形式的碰撞，捕捉现实的光辉，将我们引导回艺术的源头，引领我们开启艺术之旅。

It is finally a chance to get out of the Western trap of a beauty which, in a single word, crushes our vision of painting when, in China, it can take countless forms and express the diversity of reality where life abounds and opens to the presence of being.

最后，这也是一个逃离西方绘画审美陷阱的机会。这种美一言以蔽之，摧毁了我们对绘画的想象，而在中国画中，美可以呈现无数形态，展现丰富多彩的现实世界。

Between wonder and fight

惊奇与斗争

But who is Zao Wou-Ki? A Chinese artist, a French artist or an artist of the world? He is all of that, he is a broker of images and spaces who nourishes each of his paintings with his own experience, real or imagined. He keeps traveling. Paris is his first encounter in 1948, with works he had seen in newspapers and postcards and which he finally discovered in reality in galleries and museums. But, Paris is also a unique chance to meet with artists, intellectuals and gallery owners, remembering for example that his neighbor in Montparnasse was Giacometti. Finally, Paris is for him an opportunity to participate to the second school of Paris, with Hartung, Soulages, Maria-Helena da Silva or Georges Mathieu.

但赵无极到底是谁，他是中国艺术家，是法国艺术家，还是世界级艺术家呢？他同时拥有这三重身份，他将现实空间的元素注入画中，他用自己真实或想象的经历滋养着每一幅画，他一直在路上。1948年他第一次来到巴黎，看到了报纸和明信片上的艺术作品，然后又在画廊和博物馆中看到了原作，他在巴黎遇见了当地的艺术家、知识分子、画廊老板，他在蒙帕纳斯的邻居就是贾科梅蒂。他还与哈同、苏拉热、玛丽亚·埃伦娜·维埃拉·达席尔瓦、乔治·马修等一同加入了第二巴黎画派。

In his life as an artist, the trip to America in 1957 played an essential role, perhaps not so much as the discovery of a new creation, but as the confirmation of intuitions and metamorphoses already under way, accelerated by his encounters with Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning. He understands the urgency of change, the need to extricate himself from the impasse into which he feels he is plunged. He forged new relationships with artists such as Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Hans Hoffmann and Barnett Newman, discovered a new gallery owner, Sam Kootz, who opened the doors to the American market for him. For the next ten years, he returned to the United States every year and became part of the historical and magical triangle of contemporary art.

在他艺术家的生涯中，1957年的美国之行也发挥了至关重要的作用，他不仅仅找到了新的创作灵感，还确认了之前已经感受到的艺术方向和变化趋势，而他与杰克迅·波洛克、罗伯特·马瑟韦尔和威廉·德库宁的相遇则加速了这一变化。他意识到变化的紧迫性，他感到自己陷入了僵局，迫切需要摆脱出来。他结识了菲利普·古斯顿、弗兰茨·克莱因、汉斯·霍夫曼和巴内特·纽曼等艺术家，还认识了画廊老板萨姆·库茨，这些人都为他打开了进入美国市场的大门。在接下来的十年里，他每年都会回到美国，并融入当代艺术领域极具历史意义和神秘感的圈子。

His return to China from 1972 was also an important step, since he reconnected with the landscapes of his birth without denying the universal aspect of his work and without denying his thirst for transmission, as demonstrated by his stay here in 1985, in contact with students at the Academy of Arts.

1972年他回到中国，与出生的这片土地重新建立了联系，但并没有否认他作品的普遍性，也没有否认他对传播作品的渴望，这从他1985年向中国艺术院校的学生们授课的经历中就可以看出。

《20.12.49 - 黄色风景》（20.12.49 - Paysage jaune）

1949年，布面油画，50.5 × 59.5 cm

蓬皮杜艺术中心，国家现代艺术博物馆/工业创造中心藏，法国巴黎，1976年艺术家捐赠，© Adagp, Paris

Art historians and experts with a taste for periods and classifications sometimes minimize the complexity that lies behind the work of an artist. In the case of Zao Wou-Ki, it is striking to note at both ends of his life, more than forty years apart, corresponding to the time of youth and maturity, that the same guiding principle is asserted, the one of "wonder". At the start of his journey in Hangzhou, it is striking to note how everything is in place in its paintings, in a pre-established order with nothing threatening, neither the man who is lounging under the sun, nor the wild animal, deer or wolf, in the middle of the forest. Each figure tells the harmony of beings and things and everything matches, in harmony with nature.

有些时候，艺术史学家和喜欢划分时期和分类的专家有时会将艺术家作品背后的复杂性降到最低。值得注意的是，在赵无极人生的两个阶段，即相隔40多年的青年期和成熟期，他都将“惊奇“作为指导创作和生活的核心信念。我们可以看到，在他初到杭州时创作的画作中，无论是沐浴在阳光下的人，还是森林中的鹿、狼或其他野生动物，一切都井然有序，彼此协调。每个形象都诉说着万物的和谐，营造出一种自然和谐的感觉。

《向我的朋友亨利·米修致敬，1999年4月-2000年8月——三联画》（Hommage à mon ami Henri Michaux, avril 1999-août 2000-Triptyque）

1999-2000年，布面油画，200 × 750 cm

Likewise, in the works of the end, color takes center stage, each time different depending on the location: Ibiza, Biarritz, Gaudigny, “La Lanterne”, “La Cavalerie”... Wherever city or place he goes, wherever he paints, he draws the same thread of wonder. So the heart of his work, from the late fifties to the early 2000s, takes on its full meaning, that of a long and difficult quest for the artist to weave his link with life and give his art its indispensable truth and magic. His approach is one of conquest at every stage: when he understands that he must go beyond visible reality with the help of the sign which gives him both the strength of distance and the help of mediation to enter into the depth of the canvas. As you can see, there are so many keys, so many pillars that will encourage and support him on his way. Armed with new landmarks in space and time, able to play on all the variations of color, painting becomes his battlefield where he can wage the battle of a new modernity, instructed by the lessons of the Ancients and the Moderns, Delacroix, Manet, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, educated through the violence of History, in his native land as in Europe torn apart by fascism and the rise of communism.

同样，在他最终的作品中，色彩占据了中心位置，每次根据不同地点都会有所变化，无论他走到哪一个城市，无论他走到哪里，他都可以绘制出同样的奇迹。从50年代末到21世纪初，他的作品核心都有着完整的意义，即艺术家在漫长而艰难的探索中编织自身与生活的联系，并赋予艺术不可或缺的真实性和魔力。他的创作方法在每个阶段都是一种征服：当他明白必须借助可见的符号来超越现实的时候，符号就赋予他力量，能够使他进入画布深处。他有如此多的要诀和信仰核心来支持他不断前行。凭借对时空新的认识，他能够在色彩的各种变化中游刃有余，绘画成为了他的战场，他能够借鉴德拉克罗瓦、马奈、塞尚、马蒂斯、毕加索等古今中外著名画家的经验，吸取历史教训，在自己的国家或者被法西斯主义和共产主义分裂的欧洲发起一场新的现代性斗争。

He uses his brush as an instrument to tame horror, to tame the violence between men and in the heart of every single man. To better confront it, to better neutralize it, he will inscribe it on the canvas itself, distributing his own forces until harmony is reached.This is why Zao Wou-Ki’s art, modern from the outset, has become a humanist art placing human consciousness so high that it becomes capable of taming History. The Taoist philosophy of the East, made of continuous flows and precarious balances, meets the dialectic of Western History, with its impetuous and mechanical movements.

他用画笔来克服恐惧，化解或减轻人际关系中的冲突和内心的矛盾。为了更好地面对这种内心，更好地压制这种心理，他在画布上展示自己的力量，最终达到一种和谐。正因如此，赵无极的艺术从一开始就具有现代性，他将人类意识置于高位，使其能够超越历史的束缚，因此已经成为了一种人文主义艺术。我们可以在作品中看到东方道家哲学与西方历史的辩证法的融合。前者强调事物的不断变化以及事物之间的微妙平衡，后者则强调事物迅猛、按部就班的变化。

《向弗朗索瓦兹致敬-23.10.2003》（Hommage à Françoise- 23.10.2003）

2003年，布面油画，195 × 324 cm

摄影：Dennis Bouchard

To prevent beauty from fading and freezing, it must constantly replenish itself in the movement of life and the passage of time. Zao Wou-Ki therefore wants to welcome on the canvas the vibration of opposing forces onto the canvass, aware that in his place, the painter can repair and correct the destiny of our chaotic world. But to do this, the artist must be willing to descend into himself, as one goes down to the mine, to embark on a dangerous journey of exploration. And it is only at the end of the road, at the end of a long process of recreation, a violent hand-to-hand combat with the canvas, that he can restore a balance that we will find in Zao Wou-Ki’s great tributes, Homage to Claude Monet, Homage to Cézanne, Homage to Françoise.

美丽之物需要适应变化的环境，随着时间的推移不断发掘内在美感，以此保持活力和焕发生机，避免消逝或冻结。因此，赵无极也希望在画布上表达对立力量的冲突和相互作用。他深知作为画家能够通过艺术创作给予人们希望和重新找回平衡的可能性。但是要做到这点，艺术家必须要回归本身，回归内心。只有在旅程结束、经历了漫长的再创造过程、与画布进行激烈的搏斗之后，他才能真正地找回平衡。赵无极的《向塞尚致敬》、《向莫奈致敬》、《向弗朗索瓦致敬》等作品也展现了这种的平衡。

This is the second part of Dominique de Villepin's keynote speech delivered at the forum, "The Way Is Infinite: Zao Wou-Ki's World of Art", on September 19, 2023.

本文为2023年9月19日，多米尼克•德•维尔潘在“大道无极——赵无极的艺术世界论坛”上的主旨演讲的第二部分。

Some illustrations of Zao Wou-Ki's works in this article are slightly different with those in the speaking script due to copyrights.

由于作品图版权限制，文中部分配图与讲稿提到的相应作品图略有出入。