程亚杰邀请我为他的艺术创作写点什么，我脑海中顿时浮现了他的艺术与超现实主义之间的联系。让我从超现实主义画家乔治·德·契里柯（Giorgio de Chirico）开始这篇文章的讨论。契里柯曾经这样形容他在某个冬天参观凡尔赛宫的经历：

　　晴朗的冬天，我站在凡尔赛宫的天井里。一切都幽静沉默。一切都以一种陌生的、猜疑的眼睛看着我。然后，我发现每一殿角、每一石柱、每扇窗都有一精灵，有一无法穿透的灵魂。我环顾四周的英雄石像。它们在清冷的空气中静止伫立，冬日的寒光无情地照耀在我们身上，像支完美的歌。一只鸟儿在窗前悬挂的笼子里啭鸣。此时，我感受到那推动着人类去创造奇异物状的神秘力量。最终，创造物比造物者们更超凡。1

　　契里柯所叙述的前半部似乎类同万物有灵论的论调，经常出现在东南亚的信仰和艺术当中。2 相比之下，超现实主义艺术家则主张：艺术家的创作应摒弃一切可辨析的物体、人们熟悉的题材、传统的思想以及流行文化的标志。3 这将把我们带入弗洛伊德式潜意识的层次，让人无所“辨析”的艺术创作，契里柯称之为“神秘”。

　　在程亚杰的创作里，我们体验了近似超现实主义所散发的神秘感。实际上，他作品中的神秘性被广泛讨论。房义安（Ian Findlay）形容程亚杰的丰富视觉为“一个将物体怪异摆列后，由熟悉变得陌生的世界”。这个世界“拥有一种可怖的，不寻常而又含蓄的暴力感，显露了不安的灵魂。这最终掩盖他作品中可能出现的任何浪漫或多愁善感的情绪。”4 王仲在本书的文章中，则将程亚杰的艺术世界形容为一个“富有童趣、嬉戏、充满生命活力的童话世界”，却又是一个“有人生磨砺和阅世经验的大人的略带苦涩之作”。5

　　与传统超现实主义画家不同的是，程亚杰描绘的是日常所见的物品，使得他描绘的对象几乎类似波普艺术，却又注入了超现实主义的神秘感。在对灵魂的深刻探索过程中，超现实主义者通过具弗洛伊德潜意识的图像对理性表示怀疑，并企图颠覆马克思所提及的商品崇拜。但超现实主义艺术家又往往将荒谬的图像变得具有物恋特质。

　　在最近一篇评论三部近期超现实主义著作的文章中，雷蒙·斯皮特理（Raymond Spiteri）提出这个疑问：为什么80多年以后，超现实主义仍能吸引当代观众？他认为超现实主义的持续影响力，是因为它同其他现代主义运动不同，即它让我们走出当代艺术反美感倾向的僵局。超现实主义的“思想变化同物体有联系”。 6 无论图像是契里柯的“无所辨析的物体”亦或是程亚杰的真实图像；在被描绘的过程，以及“思想变化”广泛流传的过程中，图像本身或许便被赋予了物恋特质。

　　相较超现实主义艺术家，程亚杰的创作是在日常的真实当中寻找超现实。这可被视为画家已接受一切皆无法超脱现世的后现代主义宿命立场。艺术家唯有在流行文化及大众传播，包括通过数码影像科技而广泛流传，甚至变成流行标志语言的超现实主义历史图像，来重新捕捉艺术感受。在这个历史性过程中，潜意识中的图像变成了流行图像，等同于玩偶、人像、建筑设计、商品，甚至文化标志；而程亚杰的创作时时触发这方面的思考。

　　如果具潜意识的超现实主义图像一旦广泛流传后，便被流行图像所吸收，在“神秘”意义上它们将无从存在。剩下来的将是紧绷的情绪，以物恋的形式，以具有物恋特质的流行图像与标志的形式，并通过超现实主义手段所营造的神秘感，而不断膨胀。这种情绪与精神的困扰，不是艺术家潜意识的直接表现，而是通过典型的日常题材和物体去影响观者。

　　目前以新加坡为基地的程亚杰，原在中国艺术院校受教育，后来游学东京、莫斯科及维也纳。这样的背景或许可以解释艺术家对日常物品及生活的重视。这种亚洲美学的特质可以通过李泽厚的“历史本体论”加以讨论。在李晓林《审美主义：从尼采到福柯》一书中，作者针对两方面进行分析。一方面，西方美学中关于社会批评及个人超脱的基本价值观是当代艺术的基础；7 另一方面，则是东方美学如历史本体论所强调的社会参与。8 对李泽厚而言，存在是关于“个人在历史中的角色”。9 “艺术”可被解释为“度”，即不存在于任何对象中，也不存在于意识中，而首先是出现在人类的日常生活中，即实践－实用中的一种创造、制作。10

　　这种对日常生活的自信与赞颂，也只有通过对日常生活、群体和社会的描绘与捕捉，才能引发进一步的评论，就如程亚杰的“超现实主义”倾向。这和许多当代艺术作品的超脱－社会批评二元论基础有显著区别。程亚杰超现实主义的回归，与超脱无关，而是重新演绎日常及流行当中多层次物恋主义的荒谬。

　　这是我对程亚杰精彩作品的初步思考。对此书的出版，我在此给予他以及其他协作单位及个人诚挚的祝贺。

　　1 乔治·德·契里柯 ，“Mystery and Creation”， (1913，英译，1938)， Debbie Lewer （编者）， Post-Impressionism to World War II，Malden，MA: Blackwell，2006，128-129页。
　　2 譬如泰国艺术家布拉松·略姆昂的作品。相关图像请参阅《东方之土》，“时代之遇：新加坡美术馆藏之东南亚美术精品展”，南宁：广西美术出版社，2006，图版35。
　　3 同注释1，128页。
　　4 房义安，“Making the Familiar Unfamiliar”，Asian Art News， Sep-Oct 2005。
　　5 王仲，《一位追求尽可能完美的画家》。
　　6 雷蒙·斯皮特理，“Confronting the Liquidators”， Art Journal，22 Dec 2005。被评论的三本著作分别是Gerard Durozoi，History of the Surrealist Movement，Jennifer Mundy （编者），Surrealism： Desire Unbound，以及 Michael Richardson 与 Krzysztof Fijalkowski Surrealism Against the Current Tracts and Declarations。
　　7 目前，在西方美学圈子里有关于回到美学的讨论。其观点为美学价值并不完全为扶持经济秩序的意识形态。作者如Jonathan Loesberg 重划康德哲学对独立形体和置身度外的见解，并表示美学不是关于理性和客观正义的启蒙的指南。反观，启蒙企图从理性及客观性之前的形式当中，为这些理念提供价值。参阅 Jonathan Loesberg，A Return to Aesthetics, Stanford，CA：Stanford University Press，2005。
　　8 李晓林，《审美主义：从尼采到福柯》，北京：社会科学文献出版社，2005，240页。
　　9 李泽厚，《历史本体论——己卯五说 》，北京：生活·读书·新知三联书店，2006，113页。
　　10 同上，8－11页。

　　新加坡美术馆馆长 郭建超 (中译 周雁冰)


　　Art of Cheng Yajie
　　Cheng Yajie has invited me to write about his art. The first thoughts that came to my mind were how to relate his works to Surrealism. I will begin with Giorgio de Chirico, the Surrealist painter who once spoke of his experience in visiting Versailles, on a winter’s day:

　　Silence and calm reigned supreme. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. I looked around at the marble heroes, motionless in the lucid air, beneath the frozen rays of that winter sun which pours down on us without love, like perfect song. A bird was warbling in a window cage. At that moment I grew aware of the mystery which urges men to create certain strange forms. And the creation appeared more extraordinary than the creators.1

　　The first part of the above quote is like a description of animism, the belief that everything in the world has a spirit. This is commonly found in Southeast Asian belief and art.2 The Surrealist artist, on the other hand, should further “rid art of all recognizable material, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas and all popular symbols.”3 This brings us to the level of the Freudian subconscious, that the images created by the artist must not be “recognizable,” what de Chirico called “mystery.”

　　With Cheng Yajie we are confronted with a certain sense of mystery reminiscent of the Surrealist pronouncement. This mysticism in Cheng’s painting is widely discussed. Ian Findlay speaks of the richness of Cheng’s vision as “a world familiar to us but made unfamiliar through singular juxtapositions;” This world “is also possessed of a certain eeriness, an uncommon and subtle sensation of violence, and an uneasiness of the spirit, which eventually overwhelms any nuances of the romantic or sentimental in his art.”4 In Wang Zhong’s essay in the current volume, he also speaks of Chang’s painted world as one of a lively fairytale land but not without the melancholy shaped by life experiences and “readings into this world.”5

　　One key difference between Cheng and the historical Surrealists is the familiar, everyday subjects in Cheng’s works, making his references almost Pop Art, if not for the Surrealist sense of mysticism. In searching deep into the psyche, the Surrealists expressed the irony in the rational through images of Freudian subconscious, and also to subvert the kind of commodity fetish suggested by Marx. The Surrealists often do so in a double take turning irrational images themselves fetishistic.

　　In a recent review of three new titles on Surrealism, Raymond Spiteri asks the question why is it that after some eighty years, Surrealism still fascinates contemporary audiences. Unlike the other modernist movements, Spiteri argues, Surrealism remains relevant as it offers a way out of the impasse of the anti-aesthetics tendencies in contemporary art, as in Surrealism the “vicissitudes of thought were related to material objects.”6 Whether the painted images are de Chirico’s “unrecognizable objects,” or Cheng’s realist images, they may all become fetishistic by the very act of painting and circulation of such “vicissitudes of thought.”

　　In comparison to the Surrealists, Cheng’s solution, interestingly, is to search for the surreal in the everyday real. One might say that this is a Postmodernist stand of resignation to the fact that nothing goes beyond the text of this world. One could only recapture art through the world of popular culture and mass media, and this would include the historical Surrealist images that are now widely circulated through digital media technology, forming part of the vocabulary of popular icons. Through this historical transition, the images of the subconscious, become popular images on the same level as dolls, human figure, architecture, commodity, and even cultural symbols, as often invoked in Cheng’s works.

　　If Surrealist images of the subconscious are no longer possible as they will be absorbed into popular imagery as soon as the images are in wide circulation, what is left is the sense of tension, in the double take of fetishism, in the representation of fetishistic popular imagery and icons, enhancing this even further though the mysticism of Surrealistic devices. This is so as to create the unsettling of the mind, not in the direct expression of the artist’s subconscious, but in evoking that in the viewer, through subjects and objects that are quintessentially everyday.

　　Currently based in Singapore, Cheng was initially trained in the Chinese art academy, and subsequently studied in Tokyo, Moscow and Vienna. This background may explain the accentuation on the everyday in Cheng’s art, an Asian aesthetic characteristic which may be discussed through Li Zehou’s notion of Historical Ontology. In tracing through the evolution of aestheticism from Nietzsche to Foucault, Li Xiaolin discusses some fundamental differences between, on the one hand, the social critical and individual transcendence in western aesthetics much of these fundamental values underpin contemporary art7, and on the other hand, the societal engagement in eastern aesthetics in Historical Ontology.8 For Li Zehou, existence is about “being-in-the-world.”9 “Art” may be explained as a way of being (du), an action or creation that is located in the everyday life but is not a component of object nor consciousness.10

　　There is a certain confidence and celebration of the everyday, and it is only through first capturing such everyday, communal and societal that a further critique, such as Cheng’s “surrealist” tendencies could take form. This is in distinct contrast with the transcendence–social critique pair underpinning many contemporary art works. Cheng’s return to Surrealism, then, is not about transcendence, but reenacting the irony of multiple levels of fetishism contained within the everyday and the popular.

　　The above are some of my preliminary thoughts on Cheng Yajie’s very exciting artworks. I congratulate him and collaborators on the publication of this new collection of works by Cheng Yajie.

　　1 Giorgio de Chirico, “Mystery and Creation,” (1913, English translation 1938), in Debbie Lewer (ed.), Post-Impressionism to World War II, Malden, MA.: Blackwell, 2006, pp 128-129.
　　2 For example, works by the Thai artist Prasong Luemuang. See, for instance, “Land of the East,” in Encounters: Southeast Asian Art in Singapore Art Museum Collection, Nanning: Guangxi meishu chubanshe, 2006, plate 35.
　　3 Giorgio de Chirico, Ibid., p 128.
　　4 Ian Findlay, “Making the Familiar Unfamiliar,” Asian Art News, Sep-Oct 2005.
　　5 Wang Zhong, “Traversing between Fantasy and Reality” (in current volume).
　　6 Raymond Spiteri, “Confronting the Liquidators,” Art Journal, 22 Dec 2005. The three books reviewed were Gerard Durozoi, History of the Surrealist Movement; Jennifer Mundy (ed), Surrealism: Desire Unbound; and Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski Surrealism Against the Current Tracts and Declarations.
　　7 In western aesthetics circle there is a current discussion on the return to aesthetics, arguing that aesthetic values are not completely ideological support of an economic order. Retracing Kantian notions of autonomous form and disinterest, authors like Jonathan Loesberg argue that aesthetics was not the companion to Enlightenment ideas about reason and objective justice, but was rather the model prior to reasons and objectivity from which the Enlightenment attempted to give those concepts value. See Jonathan Loesberg, A Return to Aesthetics, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
　　8 Li Xiaolin, Aestheticism: From Nietzsche to Foucault, Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue wenxian, 2005, p 240.
　　9 Li Zehou, Historical Ontology, Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2006, p 113.
　　10 Li Zehou, Ibid. pp 8-11.

　　Director of Singapore Art Museum Kwok Kiam Chow(Translation Chow Yianping)