Beauty is a conundrum. There are beautiful things and there
are images of beautiful things. There are visual idealisations of imperfect
things and imperfect renderings of otherwise splendid things. What is it that
makes a rotting piece of fruit less beautiful than a fresh and ripe one? Is it
anything at all when the likes of a seventeenth century Dutchman can render the
former in such a compelling manner so as to restore its beauty immediately?
There are numerous treaties on beauty, and yet perhaps the
difficulty in finding its definition is down to the fact that the term itself:
‘beautiful’, is used to describe the indescribable. Because one man’s Madonna
is another’s Medusa, and vice versa, the definition of beautiful will differ
infinitely, from each beholder to the next. Therefore it is not overly
precarious to define beauty along the terms of the compelling. You find
yourself drawn into someone, or something, you cannot describe it, you are
compelled. You find that person or object, beautiful. In many ways if one
follows this line, the concept of what it is to be ‘beautiful’ is
interchangeable with that of ‘shocking’.
Consider the rotting fruit again; when depicted in layered
oil glazes by for instance a de Heem or a Breughel, the lustre of the fruit,
slick with its sheen of emanating juice, draws the eye immediately. And yet, is
this because the subject itself is beautiful, or rather because there is an
element in human nature that is particularly drawn to, if not the evidence, at
least the notion of death and decay?
Jan Davidsz de Heem, Still-life with Fruit and Butterflies, National Gallery of Canada
Explore the collection here
I think of the Cubists when I think of Yang Jinsong’s
paintings, as do I think of the Dutch still-life painters I mentioned earlier,
An artist such a Pieter Claesz had only but to depict a rich open pie, golden
crusted, filled with fruits, meat and nuts perched next to a beautifully curved
knife at its opening to speak volumes about the comfortable wealth of the
Netherlands in his era. In doing so he could also speak of an opulence, which
was at once unbecoming for a nation whose supposed puritan values would have
had them be more modest. He was not moralising but rather merely remarking, he
most probably enjoyed consuming the beautiful objects he depicted as much as he
did creating the images of them. Another great source of wealth, though also a
vice, which was included by Claesz and others was the depiction of tobacco and
the paraphernalia of smoking. Often there would be a conical wrap of
printed paper, out of which spilled the evidence of tobacco. A pipe might be in
the background and the thinnest wisp of smoke lingering above the composition.
The inclusion of the vice certainly hints briefly towards sin, but also speaks
in terms of the impermanence of life. The fleeting nature of smoke that is here
one minute, lingers and then is gone. Jinsong’s paintings also include these
symbols of sin. Jinsong’s fish are at times scattered with syringes or pills.
Now, if one things of the Tobacco which was famously traded out of the Dutch
East Indies, and then considers the volumes of opiates, mainly heroin produced
in the border regions of China, indeed a narcotic itself which was for many
years through the 1970’s and 1980s called ‘China White’, one observes a very
tidy link.
Pieter Claesz, Still-Life, 1636, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Explore the collection here
Now Picasso and co. they liked Absinthe. They liked young,
beautiful, loud prostitutes and they loved to consume fabulous bottles of wine.
The café collages and cubists musings of the 1910-1920 years tell us as much.
So much preoccupation can peak only of the voluminous understanding of how much
fun they could have. That is not to say they didn’t know these excesses were
bad for them. Then again, Picasso did not moralise, in the entire canon of
literature on him, no one would level that accusation at a man, one of whose
earliest famed works is a self-portrait as a late teen being administered
fallatio by a Spanish prostitute. I cannot accuse Jinsong of moralising, his
paintings don’t they comment without prejudice, though they staunchly fail to
deny the ugliness around us.
Picasso, Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc, 1914, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation,
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Explore the collection here
Yang Jinsong’s paintings over the last five years have been
a discourse on human behaviour, and of beauty. Yang Jinsong’s fish paintings
are unquestionably beautiful. Some are grotesque in their violence, some are so
sensual in their colour and expressively laid brushstrokes that the viewer is
almost repulsed to the pint where they can smell the rotten flesh of the fish
and the gag reflex is very nearly tempted. Either way, one does not eerily turn
away from these paintings. There is something about fish itself that is
extremely provocative. The protein has the tendency to completely polarise
people, one is either a fish eater, or staunchly not, some will only eat fish
and many others just can’t stand the smell. In Australia, where over the last
two decades at least, the procurement of fresh seafood has been a relatively
gentle challenge, we tend to be more pictorially tolerant if not inclined than
elsewhere in the world. Indeed, it is no great surprise so many of our finest
national chefs have all but made their name on the back of the freshness of the
industry here. In China, fish holds the tendency to serve as a great delicacy,
and equally become the picture of nightmares.
Yang Jinsong, private collection, Sydney
The concept of hospitality in China is a little different to
that which westerners are used to. A western businessman might ask a client to dine and think himself generous if he picks up most of the tab for a modest lunch at
the local brassiere. In China, Corporate hospitality seemingly knows no bounds.
Banquets that last hours into night are commonplace, and usually end with the
most torturous karaoke known to man in grim smoke filled rooms reeking of white
spirit. At some point along the way, at any business-oriented banquet worth its
salt in China, one or more fish will be presented. It will be proudly thrust
beneath the eyes of the guest of honour who will look down at the glassy black
eye of some recently steamed bass or two. Maybe it’s the English, with their
pedantic attention to neatness and order that the Dover Sole is perhaps the
only truly tidily deconstructed fish I can think of. As I have known it, there
is no neat way to eat or portion these live fish presentation platters at a
Chinese banquet. The fish comes to the table, everyone duly appreciates it, and
more often than not a comically intoxicated host proceeds to portion the fish
to their guests. By this usually late stage in the meal, bones, guts and whole
chilli garnishes are quite an afterthought. What is thought to be the finest
delicacy to bestow upon a guest is more often than not tiresomely difficult to
consume. The most beautiful intended part of the meal is also the most
challenging.
Yang Jinsong, private collection, Sydney
Yang Jinsong, private collection, Sydney
At the end of any of these Banquets, if one has survived the
rice wine, comes the fruit. The like of which I mentioned earlier, it must be
said, I have rarely experienced the limp flavourless watermelon which one can
easily find in a country where supermarkets import fruit year round from
wherever is convenient. In China, usually at rural restaurants, the melon is
amongst the sweetest and juiciest you might imagine. And yet with this
sweetness, comes the undercurrents. I have been fascinated to witness the
appearance of the coupling figures in Jinsong’s recent paintings. These
pink-fleshed girls clad in their black fishnets are up to all sorts of mischief
in and about these enormous melons (whose obvious connotations are perhaps a
little misplaced with regards to my observations of the Chinese bust). The
seedy undertones of sex are never far away from the Chinese Banquet. After the
meal, businessmen will be carted to the nearest teahouse to be entertained by
their hosts. If the host is looking to score big points he will simply have a
series of girls paraded in the restaurant (when the mood is convivial enough). This
is when the Karaoke starts. On each trip I have taken to China there has always
been at least one or two stories in the South China Morning Post or the China
Daily English newspapers about a loyal official getting himself into trouble
around about this time in the evening and a short, sharp moralizing column
ensues. Jinsong’s luscious offerings of his bursting melons, littered with
microphones and naughty nymphs, do just enough to set the scene without being
erotic, moralising or boringly pornographic. 
Yang Jinsong, private collection, Sydney
Alongside the still life painting of Yang Jinsong sit his
landscapes, He is perhaps not same painter of landscapes as he is of the
stunning food compositions, however in an exhibition such as this they play a
very important role in the literalising the themes on which eh touches in the
former paintings. An Olympic games is for its host nation very much the proud
presentation dish. They are the richest offerings of the splendour of a culture
and its progress in the world. For the most part. Or at least what was
broadcast around the world, the Beijing games were a glittering success
performed underneath miraculously clear skies (for China). The games showcased
the most architecturally remarkable arena and were a technological marvel, envy
you couldn’t access the BBC website. Perhaps these games are all too often
offered as an example of veneer over truly wonderful inner workings, at least
of the country as a whole. Jinsong’s Black Lotus’ purposely includes the
Olympic flag and the viewer starts to get the sense of what it is the darker
elements in the brighter paintings all refer to. These landscapes are bleak,
they are uninspiring and they are most certainly not beautiful. And they remind
me too clearly for the drive, which I have taken a number of times between the
cities of Beijing and Tianjin. These dark paintings are stark reminders of a
darkness, which lurks in modern China, but of course not just China, but
anywhere. I spoke earlier of glorious colourful de Heem paintings or of the
boisterous vices of the cubists. The drive between Beijing and Tianjin is quite
beautiful compared to those grim railway stations in the industrial ghettos
around Rotterdam or the grey concrete outskirts of Paris. There is light, and
there is darkness. It is not a Chinese thing, but very much a modern thing.
Yang Jinsong, private collection, Sydney
EH
Copyright © Evan E. Hughes, 2014
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