Fu Xiaodong
Chinablue Gallery, Beijing
Fu Xiaodong (henceforth labelled 'Fu'): Does this exhibition contain work from all 10 years you've been in Beijing since moving here in 1997?
Zhou Wenzhong (henceforth labelled'Zhou'): No, in fact during the first 3 or 4 years I wasn't painting at all.
Fu: So what were you doing during these years?
Zhou: I felt quite free coming to Beijing at that time, with no-one telling me what to do. I'm not really sure where those four years went to.
Fu: How did you get by in those days?
Zhou: I was pretty much completely dependant on my family. I read books, practised characters, I didn't really have much interest in painting. But I was ill at ease. I didn't have any clear goals, that's pretty much it.
Fu: What do your parents do for a living?
Zhou: My father is a decorator. They're very average.
Fu: How did you end up taking part in the He Xianning Art Museum exhibition?
Zhou: I started to paint again in 2001. In those early years I was always going to see exhibitions, they amazed me. I thought that installation art could be really interesting but after the novelty wore off I found it was still painting that suited me best. Doing installations with photography, one can never complete the work alone. I'm not very good at working with other people, I like doing things on my own.
Fu: When you were at art school, where did your biggest influence come from? I hear that the benefit of Nanjing Art Academy is that they leave you to your own devices.
Zhou: The teachers don't pay too much attention; they let you do what you like so there weren't any great influences. The only benefit was that we had access to a huge number of catalogues in the teachers'library.
Fu: You painted the 'Portrait' group of paintings when you were still in school. It feels like there's a Francis Bacon influence there.
Zhou: Yes. At the time, I'd just looked at a Francis Bacon catalogue, which left a deep impression. But I didn't understand why he painted like that back then and just left it. Later when I was in Beijing I saw a book,“An Interview with Francis Bacon". I thought this was really novel and got together with friends to shoot some film.
Fu: Bacon's work is the result of vivid colours, an emphasis on language, and being a homosexual, some very personal emotions. On an emotional level do you feel there are similarities with your work?
Zhou: Whenever I look at his paintings, it's his unique disposition that attracts me, it's very manly. He's not as powerful as Freud but he's extremely mature and full. I've been drifting around for quite a few years now,met some people, and whenever I don't know what to paint, I paint things I saw when in university.
Fu: What is this “very manly”disposition?
Zhou: It's not pure power. I feel it's quite refined, yet crude at the same time. His paintings are extremely poetic; it's a modern poetry, which expresses eternity.
Fu: Although poetry is a classical emotion, it's also what is missing most in life. What art finally conjures up is a kind of spiritual poetry. Like Heidegger when he said that,“the dwelling of poetry" is the power from exceedingly normal life that art can bring forth.
Zhou: There is also “facing reality”. Life was easy back in Nanjing. After coming to Beijing, I really felt the effect of politics in every aspect of life. I saw people without temporary residence papers being picked up, car after car of them. People really aren't important here. In this country, they can take you away as they please. That's when I started painting“The Bloody Shirt”. When you get to a certain age, perhaps everyone learns to enjoy a life of depressing collective parades. I remember on the 3rd day of the New Year that year, I was so happy to follow the march. The workers were very supportive. Later we'd listen to the rumours. All the way until we saw Chen Danqing's painting, I think it was real. People can be thrown down anywhere, and treated in anyway they like. This is a state of existence, reality, not something that can be described with words. Bacon faces up to exactly this kind of reality.
Fu: You'd like to face up to the social reality of “people being not important at all”？
Zhou: It's a kind of intuition, something I see, before there wasn't this concept of 'migrant workers'. My ancestors have traditionally gone out to find work. Chinese people will always have classes; even in Mao's time, in the so-called social equality, these were clearly defined. When I went into town to go to school when I was young, what you'd now call a 'son of a worker' was at the time called a 'transient child'. When you're small you don't know it but even the teachers are prejudiced. Later one slowly comes to realise that the equality is false, leaving a very deep impression.
Fu: It's true that today's social division is even more marked.
Zhou: It's more legitimate, more energetic now. This is a new start. People have been reorganised, there's not the same warmth as before. This is something truly real.
Fu: China is in a bit of a chaotic state at the moment. In the long-standing stability of capitalist developed Europe, class boundaries are relatively fixed. Working class children go on to do working class jobs. In China, the cards have been re-shuffled, throwing class relations up in the air. Those born in the 60s and the 70s have become the middle-class thanks to their education. They were poor before, their parents earning 50 kuai a month, everyone was scraping the trough. They grew up under these conditions and now they're maybe white or gold-collared workers. They've become the rising class.
Zhou: This is all related to one's personal experience. Take me for example, originally primary school was 5 years, when it came to me it was 6 orisinily middle school was 2 years, when it came 1o me it was 3; wben I got lo university where it was originally state-funded, it became self-funded; society is always changing. Before university I still felt money wasn't important, it was one's spirit that was key, by the time 2nd" year came around this had changed. What one values is constantly changing, nothing is absolute. Fundamentally, people still need stability, both the body and the soul. Beijing is incredibly different to what I had imagined.
Fu: Regardting this migration of yours, whether in terms of geography, time or social environment, it all coincided perfectly with a vital tuming point of our huge motherland in the 90s. The market has now transformed the old communist ideal. The early manufacturing society is now a consumer society. Before there were the values of simplicity, hard work and saving, now we hear, 'I consume therefore I am', in fear that by economising, you'll hold back domestic demand.
Zhou: The past was right and the present too. But people need time to accept it. We could think that suppressing students is definiely the right hing to do. Many people agree with this opinion that without suppressing society, it becomes chaotic. It's like people were being hypnotised but it also contains a beautiful ideal within, just like young people like you or me. There's a kind of cultural logic, after a certain time, it needs to come back around. At some point in the future, this society will need to absorb some fresh new blood, no matter whom. I don't know for what reason exactly but I've always had this feeling. After a certain amount of time, by going through some sort of cycle or other, it keeps the colossal machine of society ticking over.
Fu: Are you talking of sacrificing a portion of this society?
Zhou: There will always be conflict. It boils down to the fact that this is a result of culture, it needs hierarchy, it needs authority, the original order also had veneration.
Fu: I read a summary of a social psychologist's study, which said "the reason that Nazis grew out of Germany was because of the authoritarianism innate in their national character". In the results of the questionnaire, their belief and respect for authority was the highest at 87%, thus they were capable of accepting Hitler. China's ranking came second with 84% with the United States the lowest with only 20% or so. China's call for authority was only less than that of Germany. This proves that with an element of servility, one needs an absolute authority.
Zhou: You're right, he really needs someone by his side to hit him, it even makes him feel comfortable.
Fu: Or perhaps it's that he can bear it. Before the reforms it was a collective society, with characteristic control of every aspect of life, even flared trousers were snipped.
Zhou: When you feel no-one is leading you, I think everyone is the same you feel it's wrong. You think, how could someone be like this?
Fu: I generally thought that artists born in the 70s didn't pay much attention to politics or the Cultural Revolution.
Zhou: For quite some time, Mao Zedong was a perfect picture in my mind. From nothing, relying on nothing but hard work, he realised his life's goals with style and incisiveness. Veneration caused the Cultural Revolution. In textbooks the Cultural Revolution is simply just a 'mistake'. Since, I have felt that if a country can worship its leaders in such a way, society itself must have problems.
Fu: Is this since you started secondary school?
Zhou: It's since university. Nobody has any direction; they need someone strong to lead them, an idol to make one feel solid. My concern for the Cultural Revolution comes from this, not from the event itself. I never experienced the Cultural Revolution; it was too far away from me. But slowly I came to feel I had been very silly.
Fu: What was it that destroyed your idolization of Mao?
Zhou: The system of power that Mao created proved gradually to create a new class, a new group, just like before.
Fu: The reason the Communists were able to defeat the otherwise superior Nationalists were that they were able to mobilize the very cells of society, for example by mobilizing the peasants.
Zhou: I think there's a problem there. I've read George Orwell's "Animal Farm", Western intellectuals were able to predict the problems with culture before they happened. Brilliant Chinese intellectuals at the time thought that truly new things were coming, that there was no predictability. Why was Mao Zedong able to succeed? He cajoled them all very well, leading them to believe he was the leader, the saviour.
Fu: You're right, Mao's grasp of the spoken word was an important reason for his success. In Lu Xun's “The True Story of Ah-Q” for example, a white helmeted white dressed figure arrives and leaves, still not knowing what revolution is to be fought. But Mao did very well, by attacking landowners across the country, the common man grew to respect him.
Zhou: My father tells me that back then in our village, those without their head would go off and attack the landowners. Many landlords were actually very good people. In the past, one became a landlord by sticking to the good Confucian traditions of hard work and frugality, bit by bit climbing one's way up. Today small businessmen have to do exactly the same thing, diligently working their way to prosperity.
Fu: Even being so young, did the denunciations still leave an impression on you?
Zhou: The deepest impression of all, along with the teacher-student relationship because my grades weren't very good.
Fu: Were you ever made to stand in the corner?
Zhou: Many times, it became normal for me.
Fu: Did you dislike being made an example of infront of the rest, being punished individually?
Zhou: I call it 'personal humiliation therapy', through humiliation you find what's needed to set you back on track. The Cultural Revolution also used personal humiliation, it wasn't to kill you, it was to insult you. Treating intellectuals like this was like teachers dragging out their pupils, just on a larger scale. Education enlarged.
Fu: In Wang Xiaobo's "Golden Times", during the slack season when everyone was tired, people would attack the 'worn out shoes'.
Zhou: How can the majority of intellectuals still stand it? Many of them are enduring it, it's better to be living than dead. Old China had the saying, "a scholar may be killed, but never disgraced", in those days one could truly see who could endure it. The spirit has certainly regressed since then, ideologies have weakened greatly.
Fu: Cynicism indeed prevails in modern China. If ethnic peril erupts, a revolution, or an historical turning point, the voice of intellectuals will clearly be important, it will be clear. In today's prevailing commercial society, intellectuals don't have much purpose, everyone wants the same thing, to make a litle money.
Zhou: This is the same as before. The cleverest thing Deng Xiaoping did was to turn people's attention to money. Earning money is a question of ability, not of the system, which serves to provide social stability. But as soon as everyone is focused on money, man himself becomes a consumer good.
Fu: The West has a tradition of humanism promoting the individual, the spirit of man's freedom, the freedom of speech. At the very least, you can say what you want to say. In China, humanism has been discussed as little as possible.
Zhou: Events are larger than people in China. For example when one is with their parents, a hierarchy must be maintained. Once at a certain age, what one should do becomes obvious and normal. Confucianism still plays a very strong role in society.
Fu: Regarding the Cultural Revolution, all the material we get is second-hand information; it's all been moulded, look at “Mao Zedong's Biography". We all belong to a generation who have been brainwashed by the mainstream media. Our education is almost completely passive, we don't even have the right to protest. Reading rarely goes beyond the syllabus either. There's another young painter, Chen Bo, who is also concerned with Cultural Revolution, to our generation's collective image of the Cultural Revolution, an image that has been modelled by the mainstream media. The figures are all in excellent health; they wear simple clothes, have red faces, unthinking smiles, and are heading onwards full of hope for the future. But it appears like your expression of the Cultural Revolution is the complete opposite to his.
Zhou: The Cultural Revolution itself has absolutely nothing to do with me but it may manifest itself in different forms. Today there are many people dissatisfied with society, the rich-poor gap is very large, you can hear things like,“if Mao was only here now". Many people wish this. But there are also those wild types that want to shuffle the pack anew, grab at opportunities.
Fu: Wu Wenguang once said that he wanted to thank the repression of the '89 exhibition. If it hadn't been for '89, where would the platform for Chinese contemporary art have come from? Many signals suggest that Chinese cultural freedom may have already reached its peak.
Zhou: Tighten up, tighten up, loosen off, loosen off. In the West, we also see all sorts of resistance. Look at Nietzsche, he didn't participate in any politics, a little like ancient China's literati.
Fu: Fascism's success was to popularise Nietzsche's philosophy. Confucius was also to rise to fame through successive dynasties using his rule of law. He was also destitute and homeless early on in life. Only with the combination of culture and power can one realise absolute power and widespread culture. It's sure that there was wisdom and learning of superior quality but maybe being less suited to the consolidation of power, it was lost into the oblivion of history.
Zhou: He definitely touched many people's hearts. Nietzsche thought that socialism was the most sickening of enterprises. Marx was already very avant-garde at the time; Marxism was the West's most avant-garde of movements giving people a new direction. But Nietzsche guessed that it was in fact nothing more than a dictatorship of one group of thugs over another specific group. The Cultural Revolution was just like this. The chosen group was the thinkers of society, those in authority, the elite. He was able to deduce this logically; this kind of logical thinking was far stronger than that of Chinese intellectuals. Whether they acted or not, they'd be caught under by the cultural suppression. Art pertains to uphold “beauty”. I don't remember who it was who said,“After Auschwitz, mankind won't only produce beautiful art". Just like Mao being able on the one hand to write "The Opening of the Orchid Pavilion", and on the other, throw a mass of youth into the wilds, sending them off to make great achievements. Mao could only be moved by extreme events, 'beauty' couldn't touch him. This is also the most fundamental of starting points for contemporary art. Especially as regards China, 'beauty' is only the perfection of the perfect; there can be no substantive influence upon it.
Fu: Are your paintings unmasking these kinds of ugly things? Or are they trying to create a new kind of provocation?
Zhou: Since I was small I've always enjoyed copying traditional Chinese paintings, it's something that easily drags you in. But many of the literati's thoughts can be weakened, the depth lost and the effect softened. This sort of unhealthy background has gone on too long. Today, no matter what you do, relatively speaking it's always very short-term. Everyone hopes to see good things in life but society will always have weaker members. Even if they are only a few, they still exist, and people should be made aware of them.
Fu: I'm afraid this is the case for the large majority. Only a small number of people in power can feel that society is so beautiful that only traditional Chinese paintings of landscapes, flowers and birds can edify one's emotions. Even those tycoons still need to face up to stiff competition. In China, most people are apathetic to psychological suffering; they don't care about the lack of freedom or restrictions of thought. Their biggest pain comes from the battle for riches, the fight for power and unsatisfied desires. Metaphysical suffering has become aristocratic.
Zhou: But it's not completely metaphysical either, it can hit you anywhere, anytime. Many of the things in my paintings are from my childhood. For example when your teachers would hit you or punish you but you still wouldn't you’re your parents. Your parents would say, “ If you were good, why would your teacher do such a thing" You must have misbehaved.
Fu: When did you first have problems with authority? What made you think that you couldn't trust it? When did it become your enemy rather than something you could rely on and get help from?
Zhou: Maybe it was the events surrounding temporary residence papers. When I saw those people being dragged away, including friends of mine, squashed together like sardines, you see to what extent police power can be abused. In broad daylight, they can kick your door down and take you away. If it hadn't been for the death of Sun Zhigang, the temporary residence permit would have lasted even longer, eventually there had to be some bloodshed, bringing us back to the cultural logic. This society's machine needs to lap up fresh blood; blood is like its oil, keeping it running smoothly.
Fu: What do you think an intellectual is?
Zhou: Firstly one needs to have one's own complete ideas to become at least one piece among many more; it's not about duplicating the past. Creativity is very important.
Fu: What have you got from Nietzsche?
Zhou: Quite intuitive things. I've always felt he felt inferior to others. He's very similar to Bacon. His essays are very stimulating and powerful, but not with a kind of heroic power. His power has an element of self diligence, of self moulding, of self demands. No matter what setbacks he may face, he always approaches them with optimism.
Fu: In his last essay before he died, Nietzsche toppled some of his own previously stated opinions. If we develop it to the extreme we end up getting stuck in nihilism.
Zhou: Nietzsche's thought was itself very nihilistic. Like criticizing someone for their own good, he hoped that new things would be born in the remaining unhealthy emptiness. His wasn't a passive emptiness, nothing like that found in Buddhism. Questioning century-old cultural traditions, he was faced with many difficulties. Just before dying he heard the sound of church bells and thought that perhaps Christianity was right. If order is most important and people are to be steamrollered anyway, then what's the point?
Fu: Do you believe in an unchanging human nature? Lacan thought that humans were shaped by language, while Foucault believed that people's values and ethics were moulded by society. Marx also totally rejected the idea of human nature humans were just links in the chain of power structures and exchange of commercial goods. In scientific Marxism, the person becomes just another material. This is one of the distressing things about post-modern society: humanity is just an empty shell.
Zhou: The idea behind materialism is that people are defined by objects. Once you've got to grips with material objects, people are no longer important. This idea is actually extremely inhumane.
The purges in the Soviet Union, and the Cultural Revolution in China, were strongly influenced by this philosophical premise that people are defined by material objects. Atheism is also a frightening thing. It leads straight to the idea that no crime is too terrible to be committed. The atheism of the Cultural Revolution manifested itself in the destruction of statues of deities. If there is no higher power watching no audience then people can get up to whatever they want. They can legitimise their morally dubious aspirations.
Fu: That sounds like Beijing, or even the whole of China today. There is no moral or ethical code or belief. Each person is just trying to protect his own interests and get rich quick.
Zhou: That's right. If people have no beliefs they are capable of committing all kinds of outrages. They're capable of anything. To look after themselves, they will do anything.
Fu: This is also linked to group fascism, like when a community is faced with a stranger someone different to themselves. This kind of group evil can destroy the individual to the point where they do evil and don't see anything wrong with it. Any sense of right or wrong becomes dispersed into the other people around the individual. People always want to go with the flow, even senseless group violence is easy to go along with.
Zhou: Yes, and there is no one in charge, or conducting the events, it all just feels spontaneous. And the methods of the past are always used. It's like a train which has its own momentum my old life has suddenly gone, but I've got this new one to replace it with. China has always emphasised the idea of the pre-eminence of successful people, and people can use any methods to achieve their goals and become successful. Chairman Mao's saying, that“political power comes from the barrel of a gun" is actually just an expression of naked violence.
Fu: Can we understand the spectators in your paintings to be accomplices of those commiting violence?
Zhou: It's like killing a chicken to scare the monkeys.
Fu: Where are you in the paintings?
Zhou: I think I'm the one in the toilet bowl.
Fu: But who has been so violent towards you?
Zhou: The paintings aren't to scale. Sometimes when you want to express an idea, the idea might only be one percent of what you want to say, but in order to get it across you have to exaggerate it. That's one of the things I don't like about painting you have to exaggerate things to record them properly.
Fu: Some of your more recent paintings contain sexual allusions, like genitalia. Do you feel sexually repressed in any way?
Zhou: This is nothing to do with sex. It's just a method of making people think “this really is total and utter garbage”. I used to be a bit more lenient, but now I've decided I don't need one iota of lenience.
Fu: So you use sexual organs as a kind of denigration something with the same value as the toilet bowl?
Zhou: Yes. Nietzsche said that urinating is a way of relieving stress. It relaxes people. There are some things that should stay in the past. They are meaningless.
Fu: There are also these eye-catching bright red bottoms, and yellow ornaments. What is your understanding of sex?
Zhou: I wanted to make the paintings look less sombre a bit more interesting. I painted testes because I thought they represented a new beginning of life, everything starting from scratch. It's nothing to do with sex. As an artist, no matter how over-the-top you paint, even if you think it's really in-your-face, it still might only have a small effect on other people. When I paint, I think of the audience.
Fu: There's also a painting with four people face down with their hands tied behind their backs, surrounded by tubes that look like intestines. What sets you apart from other young artists is firstly that you emphasise the painted nature of your work, and second that the scenes are all imagined by you, not montages of news photos.
Zhou: My father has health problems and I'm often in the hospital observing things. Modern paintings that aim to be more photographic are still important. Aside from looking at the meaning of a picture, I think it's important to just look at all the information in the picture itself. I want to get back to how I was when I had just learnt to paint quite plain and simple. The paintings mostly consist of my own thoughts. I don't like just transferring a photo onto canvas. I try to paint things with as little to do with other pictures as possible.
Fu: Do you think much about controlling the language of the paintings?
Zhou: My favourite painters are mostly early artists like El Greco and Matthias Grunweald. Their paintings are carefully considered but also expressive of the artists' ideas. Early painting is not like modern painting. Whichever way you look at it, it is bigger. When I paint, I try to relax as much as possible. It brings me pleasure.
Fu: Since you have been signed, you seem more distressed than before. That's quite strange.
Zhou: Just after I was signed my father fell ill.
Fu: Do you get on well with your father?
Zhou: He supported me right from the start, both materially and spiritually. We get on really well together and talk about everything. I was very naughty as a child and was always disappointing him. He's a very kind person. He's a Buddhist. He's helped a lot of people.
Fu: What do you fear most?
Zhou: Being afraid is pointless it's not like being afraid will stop things from happening. Actually, there's nothing that particularly scares me. It's like painting. If you're afraid then you won't look at a painting. But I want to see things more clearly.
Fu: What is your idea of success?
Zhou: After painting all these years, the most important thing is to make my father happy. I want him to see my success.
17th March 2007
