文/朱其

　　劉力國的雕塑表現了一種中國式的從革命到消費社會的自我形式，這種形式主要表現為宗教、民間、消費和毛澤東這些現代中國本土文化元素的奇異混合。粗俗、大眾和民間是劉力國雕塑中自覺強調的視覺特征，這種特征也負載著關于革命的記憶、進步的欲望以及從革命到消費社會成長中的一種精神寄托的準宗教的現代形式。
　　在形式上，劉力國致力于從中國塑像傳統中尋找一種前衛性的形式變體，這種方式最初體現在九十年代中期的“屁股”瓷瓶系列，這個系列試圖表現中國在九十年代消費社會崛起后的文化的粗俗性和變革活力這種悖論的雙重性。就像他自己認為，他想諷刺中國的那種強制性和人為的進步行為，“要造一個東西，今天造了明天就要出效果。”他的作品因此想表現這種傾向，這就是“狹義的民族主義者、小農意識、不服氣、叫板”等現代幾百年形成的現代自我特征。
　　對于這種中國式現代性和九十年代后意識形態文化特征的諷刺性表現，劉力國使用了反高雅、反審美和反精英的語言方式，他將惡俗得沒有任何什么意義的屁股形體鑲嵌在中國傳統的瓷瓶形式中，在添加各種艷麗惡俗的花朵，使用黃金色和大紅等濃重的民間塑像的著色。沒有意義的“屁股”因為與代表高雅和精英的瓷瓶的強制性結合而開始具有意義，這在瓷瓶傳統中從沒有出現過，也是劉力國開始真正確立了這種個人語言方式的標志，這使他成為九十年代中期當代藝術轉向中國本土和社會主題表達的艷俗藝術的代表人物，以及后現代雕塑的一個重要實踐者。
　　“瓶子“系列的意義在于使劉力國之后的藝術形成了兩條基本主線，一是視覺形式的民間性和對于中國塑像傳統的改造；二是對于中國本土現代性中民族主義、農民性和大眾性的文化特征的表現。前者實際上是關于形式實踐的，后者則是一種對中國狀態的文化征候的呈現。在形式和表現主體這兩個方面，盡管劉力國使用了一種貌似諷刺和文化批判的形式，刻意顛覆中國塑像傳統中的高雅和精英色彩，以及對于從革命到消費社會轉變的文化正統盡失和后意識形態文化荒誕性的表達，但這似乎并不能涵蓋劉力國藝術的主要傾向，這個傾向就是對于中國并不完美的甚至具有粗俗和根源混亂的現代性特征的一種真實呈現。
　　這一基本的出發點實際上表明劉力國的藝術表現出一種內在的雙重性，它既有對于中國式的粗俗和滲透小農文化的現代性的批判和諷刺的一面，同時也有對于這種本土變種的現代性的力量感和革命性活力一種由衷的自我認同。如果看不到這種矛盾的雙重態度同時存在，這實際上忽視了其中更具自我形式的一面，而只是關注在九十年代中期當代藝術對于后現代方式的使用。無論在形式或主體性上，后現代方式實際上只是劉力國最初的語言參照，真正重要的是他開始正面對待中國的現代性“缺陷”，并且自覺地對其不加掩飾和修正的呈現，并從民間塑像傳統中尋找可以反映這種“缺陷”特征的語言特質和形式變體。
　　“屁股”對于瓷瓶文化的鑲嵌的實際意義并不在于一種對精英陶瓷傳統的顛覆和諷刺形式的獲得，對于劉力國而言，更重要的是民間性、民俗塑像和粗俗現代性這些元素的中國現當代“缺陷”的自我表現力。在此之后，劉力國實際上也沒有再進行過對于陶瓷的顛覆和改造，而是致力于對傳統和現代民間塑像的變體實驗。事實上，除了陶瓷屬于中國雕塑傳統中的精英文化，十九世紀以前的中國雕塑傳統主要就是民間塑像，如佛像和民俗塑像，在二十世紀中期，還包括毛澤東像、文革陶瓷等革命塑像。
　　瓷瓶系列實際上標志了劉力國從精英視覺向民間性和粗俗性語言模式的轉型，但民間性和粗俗性的態度還是具有一種后現代的反崇高特征。這種后現代手法在“盤子”系列中逐漸不再借用。而是開始了一種更本能和粗野的語言方式，幾乎是對粗俗和消費社會的荒誕的一種徹底正面的表現。這個系列翻制了甚至色調惡心的人腳、人手、豬頭、鵝、雞的等大原型，連反諷性的美也談不上，表現了一種生命的徹底物質化和靈魂盡失的荒誕存在。
　　“盤子”系列可以說是劉力國在“粗俗”主題的語言實驗上走得最極端的一次，幾乎完全是一種反學院派的風格，但具有極強的視覺沖擊力。這個系列呈現了中國消費資本主義的極端本質，但在語言上刻意進行了一種粗俗過度的風格化。風格過度的語言實驗還包括對于毛澤東和革命英雄塑像的波普化，文革塑像是中國進入現代之后的民間塑像高潮，像毛澤東、黃繼光等英雄模范人物在六、七十年代都被做成各種民間陶瓷塑像，在中國社會無處不在。劉力國最初的嘗試是給這些塑像穿上花衣服，使其具有消費社會的流行文化特征。
　　翻制真實動物和人的器官，并放在盤子上作為一種消費社會的寓言象征，或者給毛和英雄穿上花衣服，這種方式在雕塑語言的前衛實驗上走得過于極端，盡管反映了劉力國試圖尋找可以直接與本土的當代經驗對應的一種自我形式，但這種語言實驗還是表象化和形式主義的。
　　在將毛澤東的形象和菩薩佛像的一體化嘗試中，劉力國對民間塑像的語言實驗取得了真正的突破，如“手拿如意”、“有五個小孩”、“戴軍帽和小孩”等作品，表現為一種毛形象的菩薩化，或者菩薩像的毛化。在這個系列中，毛澤東的臉與觀音或者彌勒佛的大肚子身體合在一起，毛的臉也并非完全是毛的原形，而是臉部特征似毛又似觀音，具有一種肖像的模糊性，但也具有一種肖像的家族性。
　　與毛穿波普衣服系列相比，劉力國對于毛塑像的改造不再是一種強加外衣的外在形式的結合，而是利用了佛像和毛塑像在宗教和現代意識形態、傳統和現代神像的形式相似和形象象征的內在關系。毛的觀音化實際上揭示了毛塑像在毛時代的一種特定的意識形態性質，即毛在1949年以后注重將民間藝術形式改造為一種現代神像崇拜和意識形態宗教的政治工具，尤其是在神像崇拜上，盡管文革期間的毛民間瓷像沒有宣示為自己是一種宗教形式，而是一種領袖紀念物，但實際上已經具有一種宗教神像的性質。
　　這表明了在毛的民間瓷像和民間觀音像、傳統宗教和現代意識形態之間并沒有不可逾越的界限，尤其是在大眾和民間社會領域。對于毛的民間塑像在和佛教神像在形體特征的這種游戲，使得劉力國找到了一種意識形態批判的更含蓄和本體的語言形式。在之后的“給導師掏耳朵”、“吹喇叭”等作品，他使用的則是一種超驗的情景主義虛構的方式，而不僅只是用民間塑像的變體方式。“給導師掏耳朵”表現了一個小孩站在毛的巨人肩上，給毛掏右耳朵，這種情景虛構的系列實際上最終在語言上擺脫了對于毛和消費社會的反諷特征，進入一種歧異、多義和模糊性的語言表達中。
　　從形式上看，劉力國試圖將民間塑像的形式改造成可以表達中國現代文化的自我形式，這種形式主要在于表現中國的現代性特征，更進一步而言，這種現代性實際上是一種有缺陷的現代性，但同時擁有改造中國的力量。因此，對于這種有缺陷但也有力量的現代性的表現，盡管批判和反諷仍然具有重要的意義。但更重要的是呈現其整體的真實，和我們必須接受的自我認同，不然的話，我們將喪失中國在20世紀的自我特性。就這一點說，劉力國的作品最終表達的是一種宿命。
　　這種宿命還反映為，它的表現只能尋找真正本土滋生的屬于他自身象征特征的現代形式。在面對精英的但基本上是過于西方化的，并且在中國沒有真正力量性的這一事實。劉力國寧愿選擇同樣具有缺陷的民間塑像進行改造，那些粗俗的民間的偶像和塑像，被最終改造成從革命到消費社會的缺陷形式。在這個基本前提下，在語言上實際上完成了從民間的前衛性轉換。

　　2006年5月9日寫于望京

　　ldols, vulgar and Folksy
　　From the Revolutionary Era to the Flawed Mode of Consumer Society,
　　Regarding Liu Liguo’s Sculpture

　　Written by: ZHU QI

　　Liu Liguo’s sculptures display a kind of Chinese mode of selfhood that spans the revolutionary period through consumer society. This kind of mode manifests primarily as a bizarre mixture of elements of modern Chinese indigenous culture, religion, folk culture, consumption, and images of Mao Zedong. The vulgar, the mass, and the folksy are the visual characteristics that Liu Liguo consciously emphasizes in his sculptures. These characteristics are also loaded with memories of revolution, desire for progress, as well as the modern form of quasi-religion, a kind of spirituality invested in the society’s growth from revolution to consumer society.
　　In terms of form, Liu Liguo has devoted himself to finding variation from within traditional Chinese sculpture. This method first emerged in his 1990s ceramic “Butt” series. This series showed the vulgarity of culture following the rise of 90s consumer society, its transformational energy and the duality of this paradox. As Liu Liguo sees things, he wants to satirize the forced and artificial behavior of progress in China. “I want to make something today that will have an effect tomorrow,” he says. For this reason, his works display this kind of inclination, “narrow nationalists, the peasant mentality, rebellion, challenges and provocations” and other characteristics of modern selfhood formed over the past several hundred years.
　　In the context of ceramic culture, the actual significance of a “butt” inlaid into the ceramic does not lie in achieving a form that subverts and satirizes the traditional essence of fine ceramics. For Liu Liguo, instead, what mattered were the self-expressiveness of elements of contemporary Chinese “flaws,” the folksy qualities and popular cultural characteristics of folk statues and their vulgar, coarse and earthy modernity. After this series, Liu Liguo did not actually undertake any more subversive remaking of traditional ceramics, but rather devoted himself to experimentation with traditional and modern variations on folk statues. Prior to the 19th century, with the exception of the ceramics that belonged to traditional Chinese elite culture, the main tradition in Chinese sculpture was folk art, such as statues of the Buddha and images from other local folkways. In the middle of the 20th century, this folk art tradition included likenesses of Mao Zedong and other revolutionary images. By integrating images of Mao Zedong and the Buddhist figure Pusa, Liu Liguo’s experiments in his artistic language made a breakthrough, with pieces such as “Buddha’s Scepter in Hand,” “With Kids, Wearing a Military Cap,” etc. These works. Expressed a Buddha-fica-tion of Mao’s lmage,” or a Mao-ification of the Pusa Buddha. In these series ,Mao’s face and the big-belly of Guan-yin, or the Maitreya Buddha, are combined into one figure. Mao’s face is not entirely his own, and the features of his face are also similar to those of the Buddha, possessing a kind of ambiguous portraiture, and yet possessing a kind of familial character to the portrait as well.
　　In comparison to the series in which Mao wears pop attire, Liu Liguo’s modification is no longer the sort of merger that involves forcing clothes onto the exterior of the image. Rather ,it involves the use of religious and modern ideologies of the Buddha and the Mao statue, and employs the intrinsic relationship between the symbolic imagery and formal resemblances of traditional and modern likenesses. The Buddha-fication of Mao revealed a kind of specific ideological quality to Mao statues in the Maoist era, namely, the way in which, after 1949, Mao placed great stress on the remaking of folk art images into political tools in the service of a kind of modern idol worship and ideological religion. This is especially the case with idol worship. Although the folk art ceramic figures of Mao during the revolutionary period did not explicitly proclaim a religious form, in reality, they already possessed the quality of religious idols.
　　This is clear from the folk ceramics of Mao and folksy Guan-yin Buddha. traditional and modern ideologies have no impassable boundaries, especially in the realms of mass and folk society. The game played with physical characteristics of the bodies of folk statues of Mao and Buddhist idols, allowed Liu Liguo to find a more implicit and veiled, as well as ontological, artistic language for ideological critique. In his later works, “Picking the leader’s Ears,” “Blowing the Horn,” and other such pieces, he used a method of fictional transcendent situationism, and not merely just the method of physical variation on the folk idol. “Picking the Leader’s Ears” involves a small child standing on Mao’s giant should, cleaning the inside of Mao’s right ear. This kind of fictional situation series has already cast off the art language characteristics satirizing Mao and consumer society, and has entered into a kind of different, Polysemous and ambiguous expressive language.
　　From the perspective of form and style, Liu Liguo attempts to remake the form of folk statues into something that can express China’s cultural self-formation. This form primarily expresses China’s characteristics of modernity. Going a step further, this kind of modernity is, in reality, a kind of flawed modernity, but at the same time, it has the power to transform China. Consequently, critique and satire are still of major significance in this flawed and yet forceful display of modernity. More important still, is the task of presenting its truth in entirety, and the self-identification that we must accept, without which China’s mode of selfhood characteristic of the 20th century will be lost. On this point, Liu Liguo’s work expresses a kind of fatalism.
　　This kind of fatalism is also reflected in the fact that its presentation can only be sought in that which is authentic, indigenously propagated, and belonging to the modernform of its own symbolic characteristics. In the face of a culture that is refined, but excessively Westernized at its base, and that fact that China has no genuine forcefulness, Liu Liguo prefers to remake folk statues that are as flawed as China-those crude and vulgar, folksy idols and statues, that were finally transformed from revolutionary forms into forms of flawed consumer society. Under these basic preconditions, this choice has in fact accomplished the transformation in his artistic language from the folksy to the avant-garde.