Rolling Heads: Chinese Woodcuts and Paintings in Berlin
Tina Kesting
In 1993, the Chinese artist Fang Lijun was first shown in Berlin as a participant in the group exhibition "China Avant-Garde" where he presented his flashy colourful paintings. Fang who represents modern China with his works was back in town with a solo exhibition of his woodcuts and drawings at the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin Museum of Prints and Drawings. Fang combines Chinese traditional elements with modernist techniques and topics that result in impressive, inspiring super large-sized works.
Tina Kesting: What gave you the impulse to invite Chinese artist Fang Lijun to have an exhibition of his woodcuts and drawings at Kupferstichkabinett Berlin?
Jasper Kettner: Art collector and patron Erika Hoffman is a great fan of Fang and has collected his works for many years. After she withdrew from her presidency of Friends of the Kupferstichkabinett, our director Hein-Th,Schulze Altcappenberg wanted to honor her long participation with an exhibition of contemporary art. Gallery owner Alexander Ochs, who deputizes Fang’s works in Berlin, supported this idea and distributed several works to this show. And it was our goal to present the prints of one of China’s contemporary artistic stars in Berlin, who is already well known for his paintings. While those pieces are somehow very kitschy and bonbon-colored, his woodcuts are even more interesting and precise in the use of colors and forms.
TK: Why does Fang fit perfectly in the Berlin art scene?
JK: After the wall came down, the Berlin art scene became more and more international. Especially African and Asian art started to influence European and German art. So, Fang’s works are an important distribution to the development of Berlin’s art scene, which is still in the process of changing and of radical breaks with old conventions. Furthermore, German artists were presented in the 1930s and 1940s in China under socio-critical aspects, and Fang got to know works by the German artist Käthe Kollwitz. So you might say that they, Chinese and German artists, influenced each other and that impact can be seen at Fang’s works.
TK: What, in your opinion, is the specialty and uniqueness of Chinese art?
JK: The connection of genuine Chinese traditions with modernism, with Western tendencies, which both are visible in works by Chinese artists. On the one side, they are based on Chinese traditions, Chinese realities are presented, but on the other side, contemporary Chinese artists are strongly influenced by international issues, topics and techniques which are combined with Chinese aspects.
TK: Can you see in Fang’s works any Western influences?
JK: At Fang’s works, there is an interesting connection between East and West. Woodcut is a typical Chinese medium with a long tradition which Fang combines with Western impacts. He uses techniques he saw in works by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch, such as dissected and fragmented parts that are recombined before printing. On the other hand, he works with clairobscure color printing which was frequently used in 16th Century German and Italian art. Different nuances of the same color are used to create shades and spatiality. Additionally, Fang’s early more linear works are influenced by the technique of the German artist Georg Baselitz. All in all, you can say that in his early works there is a strong impact by techniques German artists used, which dissolves more and more in his later woodcuts and drawings.
TK: Do you think that Chinese art (graphics) has found a new market in Germany?
JK: I could imagine that Chinese graphics are more accepted in Europe and Germany than other genres. I am convinced that new fans and a new market can be easily established in Germany while Chinese art is already very popular in the United States.
TK: In which way is Fang influenced by the German artist Käthe Kollwitz?
JK: I think that there is no strong impact. In many critiques you can read about such an influence, but the only reason for this assumption lies in the fact that Fang is educated in European history of graphics and in the course of his education he got to know works by Goya, Kollwitz and Munch. Kollwitz was presented as a political and communist artist in China and was glorified as role model, but Fang was educated during the opening of China to the West, so the influence of his works is much more international. That’s why I would estimate that Kollwitz’s influence on Fang is not very strong. You can find woodcuts of heads by Fang, which was also a topic at Kollwitz’s lithographs, but many other artists focused on the presentation of heads, too.
TK: What do you think is the reason that Fang became successful with and famous for his graphics so late?
JK: The reason for his late success of prints could be that works on paper are not as popular as paintings, which have a greater market. But in other respects, I have no idea why his graphics became successful so late. Maybe works on paper possess a lightness and transience that contradicts the general reception what art works have to represent. Another reason could be, that he first focused on paintings more intensively than on prints.
TK: What is it that fascinates him about heads?
JK: Fang’s heads differ between an abstract and a more general presentation of heads and they portray of his own balded head. So, these works are an exploration of himself and of his position in society. The relationship between the individual and the mass is extraordinary, which he visualizes through his heads. Baldies have a special but ambivalent connotation in China: they can stand for poverty and monasticism, for soldiers and prisoners. As ambivalent this meaning is, as ambivalent and contradictory can be the meaning of his works. Is the mass of red bald heads in his woodcut 2003.2.1 a specific group, you might think of Protestants on the one hand or you might ask yourself if it is a survey of Fang’s position as an individual in a mass society? The presentation of that topic is an important issue for him, but not only for him. It is a survey everybody not only in China might be concerned with in his daily life. Also Europeans as well as Americans are concerned with this issue, which can be transferred to their daily life.
TK: Do you think that the genre of prints is still a contemporary art form?
JK: Definitely. Graphics is a very lively medium in which a lot is happening and with which many artists occupy their time. It is not implicitly a hot spot, and other media are more present. Prints might always stay in the second row, but this medium is, as I said, very lively and it doesn’t need to take the pole position in art.
