素描的素描

读钱大经大型铅笔系列

Sketching the Sketch: On Qian Dajing's Large-Scale Pencil Series

陈丹青

Chen Danqing

我没见过钱大经自南艺毕业后的作品。移居纽约期间，他给我看他为侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆创作的大型浮雕图片。新世纪，他开始画尺幅渐渐增大的素描，数度更换素材，一直画到今天。他的作品很像他的性格。我说不出为什么像，他的性格是怎样的呢，我只能说，“耿介”。

Since graduating from the Nanjing University of the Arts, I haven't seen any of Qian Dajing's work. While we were in New York, he showed me images of a large-scale relief he created The Memorial Hall of The Victims in NanJing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. In the new millennium, he began creating sketches that gradually increased in size, experimenting with various materials, and continues to work in this way today. His work closely mirrors his personality, though I can’t quite pinpoint why. The best word to describe him might be “unyielding.”

谈论素描很难。而大经所作，也许可以叫做素描的素描。这项工期漫长的稳健工程，十二分严肃，冷静，周密，不动声色。我只会画一两小时的素描作业，完全无法知道他的把控何以不见丝毫闪失，以至这些纸本被注入一种介乎无情与疯狂的气质。起初的石桥系列仍是我们熟知的素描，亦即，描绘画家被吸引并选择的物体。但素描的野心与风格化，经已显示。石桥的地域和环境被去掉了，只剩桥体，刻意减弱了浓度，通体浅淡，近似蝉蜕，或者，略微曝光过度的摄影底片。那浅淡，是被作者有所克制的诗意（江南、石桥，很难摆脱诗意）。为什么克制？我猜，大经可能隐隐感到，他要的不是诗意。之后的另几组作品——皖南牌楼，石人与石像，形态被重组的长城——也大致如是：精简、化约、怀古，都做到了，画中散发着古老符号必定自带的抒情，或曰，沧桑之感。不过，细看局部，也就是如扫描般审慎铺排覆盖的笔致，显示大经在画中苦心寻求的魅力，并非景物，而是：素描。

Discussing sketches is challenging, and perhaps what Dajing creates could be termed “sketching the sketch.” This long-term, meticulous endeavor is marked by its seriousness, calmness, precision, and subtlety. I can only manage an hour or two of sketching at a time and cannot fathom how he maintains such flawless control, resulting in paper works infused with a quality that hovers between detachment and obsession. His initial Stone Bridge series remained within the familiar realm of sketching, depicting objects that captured his attention. However, his ambition and stylization were already evident. The surroundings of the stone bridge have been stripped away, leaving only the bridge itself. The tones are intentionally muted, giving it a delicate translucency, akin to a cicada’s discarded shell or an overexposed photograph. That delicate translucency reveals a restrained poetic quality in the artist’s work (as it is difficult to escape the inherent poetry of Jiangnan and stone bridges). But why the restraint? I suspect that, deep down, Dajing sensed that poetry wasn’t his true goal. The subsequent series—Southern Anhui archways, stone figures, and restructured forms of the Great Wall—adopt a similar approach: they embody refinement, reduction, and a sense of antiquity, exuding the inherent lyricism and enduring history that ancient symbols naturally convey. However, a closer inspection of the details—meticulously arranged with scanning precision—reveals that the charm Dajing painstakingly seeks in his work lies not in the subjects themselves, but in the act of sketching.

画到大尺寸的墙砖系列，转折出现了。当物质以超现实尺度被凸显的同时，墙砖似乎消失了，大经让我们忽略对物象的辨认，最大限度看见了他的“素描”。是的，那不再是金陵的墙砖，而是“素描”。然而铅笔的“纵欲”功能，仍被满足：细节、质地，惊人地逼真，凑近看，铅笔的欲念渗入墙砖的每一豁隙、裂痕、糙面，还有遍布砖身、经已钙化的早古苔藓（我不知道大经是否动用了铅笔的所有型号）。但素描的功能，被翻转了——越看越多的苔藓、糙粒、裂痕、豁隙，分明不是在诉说砖体的质地，而是，铅笔的神效。被笼罩在统一的铅灰色效果中（从接近纸白的轻敷，到凝着银光的阴影），奇异的是，墙砖系列看上去有如抽象画。人画出作品，会被作品渐渐引领。我以为大经到这一步，该是他的极限了。在下一个惊奇之前，似乎作为例外，他画了一组虚拟的“形状”：也许有上百个方型的立柱，渐次堆叠，形成介乎山冈与金字塔的景观，未经画出的光源在柱形间投下参差而齐整的阴影，如一座初建或被劫毁的城，望之凛然（莫非这是大经自己的心像么？）。

With the large-scale wall-brick series, a turning point emerged. As these materials are magnified to surreal proportions, the bricks themselves seem to disappear, shifting focus away from the objects themselves, emphasizing his “sketching.” Indeed, these are no longer Nanjing’s bricks—they are pure “sketches.” The sensuality of the pencil remains: the textures and details are astoundingly realistic; up close, the pencil seems to seep into every crevice, crack, and rough surface, even capturing traces of ancient moss calcified on the brick surfaces (I wonder if Dajing used every pencil available). However, the function of sketching has been reversed—an increasing number of moss, rough particles, cracks, and crevices clearly do not narrate the texture of the bricks; instead, they reveal the magical effects of the pencil. The image is enveloped in a uniform graphite gray effect (ranging from a light wash near the white of the paper to shadows that shimmer with silver). Strangely, the wall-brick series appears almost like abstract painting. As artists create, their work gradually leads them onward. I thought that Dajing had reached his limit at this stage. However, as an exception before the next surprise, he painted a series of virtual “shapes”: perhaps a hundred square columns stacked in succession, forming a landscape that hovers between a hillside and a pyramid; an unseen light source casts uneven yet orderly shadows between the columns, reminiscent of a newly constructed or ravaged city, presenting an imposing presence (could this be a reflection of Dajing’s own psyche?).

我笑称他在玩“法西斯美学”，不料大经接着画出了砚台系列，令我愕然。第一次，统辖他的素描王国的不再是均质的灰度，这组素描砚台的浓黑——可能用了炭笔——如其质地本身，密实而沉默，同时，亦如浓烟，轻盈、冷漠、神秘，乍一看，有悸怖之美，而且，老天爷，居然极度斯文，近乎极简主义的室内修辞。其中一枚砚台的台面，皱起波纹而中间下陷，成为突兀而优美的凝固幻象。现在我无法分辨是素材战胜了媒介，还是媒介制伏了主题。我立即认出这是砚台，但大经将之提升为大幅的素描。我不知如何解释这“提升”，因为我没见过这样的素描——至少，没见过墙砖与砚台能够这样地被委身于素描，抑或，铅笔与碳粉因之被开发了未知的潜能。

I jokingly called it “fascist aesthetics,” only to be astonished when Dajing then unveiled his Inkstones series. For the first time, the unified grayscale that had governed his sketches was replaced by the intense blacks of the Inkstones series—possibly rendered in charcoal—that are solid and silent, just like their texture. At the same time, they resemble dense smoke: ethereal, detached, and enigmatic, possessing an unsettling beauty at first sight. Moreover, surprisingly, they exude a refined elegance, embodying a minimalist rhetoric in their design. One of the inkstones features a surface with rippled folds and a central depression, creating a striking yet beautiful frozen illusion. At this point, I can no longer discern whether the material has triumphed over the medium or whether the medium has subdued the subject. I immediately recognized the inkstone, but Dajing has elevated it into grand sketches. I’m unsure how to explain this “elevation” because I’ve never seen sketches quite like these. At least, I have never encountered wall bricks and inkstones so completely surrendered to sketching, nor have I seen the pencil and charcoal reveal such unexplored possibilities.

我也不知道大经为什么沉潜于铅笔的长途跋涉，带着他严密的自我规训，带着生于金陵城的画家才会投注的选择（譬如：墙砖与砚台），带着对今日种种本土艺术的深藏不露的蔑视（应该是无视），有如一种极度内敛的意志，他回到绘画的初起类别（被称为“素描”），抱守着男性的洁癖（这些画面的灰度与浓黑，异乎寻常地干净），作为他的隐匿，也作为拒绝。我可能要重新认识大经，他显然在世界的美学丛林中反复寻找他的焦距。为配合我的书写，他特意交代了他的影响来源：范宽、巨然、卡拉瓦乔、拉图尔……然后，晚期的罗斯科、理查·塞拉的钢体雕塑、杜塞尔多夫学派贝歇夫妇的类型摄影……我也爱以上作者——尤其是理查·塞拉——但我想不到这些影响会进入白纸与素描（仿佛一场炼金术）。此外，大经使我确信，除了我长期憎惧的中国学院素描，素描不会失去尊贵与清白，而铅笔所能抵达之所——也许包括心理的、心灵的场域——远远超出我的想象。

2024年10月5日

I don’t understand why Dajing immerses himself so intensely in this long journey with a pencil, disciplined and meticulous, choosing subjects that only a painter from Nanjing might invest in (such as bricks and inkstones). Perhaps it’s his quietly hidden disdain (or indifference) for contemporary local art, a deeply restrained resolve. He returns to the original category of painting, known as “sketching,” embracing a masculine cleanliness—remarkably pure in its shades of gray and deep black—serving both as his means of concealment and rejection. I may need to re-evaluate Dajing. He’s clearly revisiting and searching for his focus in the aesthetic jungles of the world. To complement my writing, he specifically cited his influences: Fan Kuan, Ju Ran, Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour… then late Mark Rothko, Richard Serra’s steel sculptures, and the typologies of Bernd and Hilla Becher from Düsseldorf School…I, too, admire these artists, especially Richard Serra. But I never anticipated these influences would manifest on white paper as sketches, like an alchemical process. Beyond that, Dajing has convinced me that, aside from the academic Chinese sketches I’ve long loathed, sketching can still retain its dignity and purity. The realms that a pencil can explore—including psychological and spiritual dimensions—extend far beyond my imagination.

October 5, 2024

部分作品图

垩山/The chalk mountain

2021年

铅笔纸本/Pencil on paper

140×250cm

城砖5号/City wall brick5 

2019年

铅笔纸本/Pencil on paper

226×95cm

城砖4号/City wall brick4

2019年

铅笔纸本/Pencil on paper

226X95cm

黑凹·砚7/Black concave·Inkstone 7

2024年

纸本石墨和炭铅/Graphite and Charcoal on Paper

205X155cm

黑凹·砚1/Black concave·Inkstone 1

2024年

纸本石墨和炭铅/Graphite and Charcoal on Paper

226×100cm

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