Saturday, June 14, 2008

China's Great Wall of Silence: Xu Weixin Paints the Soul. 中国的沉默长城:徐唯辛绘制灵魂



In this painting, Chinese artist Xu Weixin has taken as his subject matter a single photograph of a young woman. Xu has enlarged the photograph enormously; its scale suggests that of the painting of Mao Zedong that defiles the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing.

在这幅油画中,中国艺术家徐唯辛将一个年轻女子的单幅相片做为他的创作题材。徐将相片显著地放大了;它的尺幅与玷污了北京紫禁城城门的毛泽东画像相当。

The innocence of the young woman comes through in the painting but there is more to her than the callow school girl. There is strength also; she wears an almost skeptical expression. She has a soul that one can see through her eyes. Mao Zedong had no soul and Gao Qiang powerfully depicted the result in his Swimming Mao: a human being, languid in a river of blood, blood that he spilled.

画中呈现出年轻女子的无辜, 但她并不仅仅是一个单纯的女学生, 其中也有力量:她露出似乎是怀疑的表情。人们可以从她眼中看到她的灵魂。毛泽东没有灵魂,高强在他的《毛泽东勇渡江》中有力地描绘了答案:一个在他自己溅出的血河里倦怠乏力的人。

The young woman is Rongfen Wang, and it is fitting that her photograph is enlarged (it is in fact the size of Mao's at the Forbidden City), and the subject of a painting, for Rongfen indeed had a soul. Forty two years ago this August, nineteen year old Rongfen Wang stood in Tienanmen Square and watched as Song Binbin pinned a Red Guard armband onto Mao Zedong. That moment was the start of the tyrant's great blood-letting in the Cultural Revolution.

这个年轻的女子是王容芬,她的照片被放大是合适的(它实际上是紫禁城上的毛的画像的尺寸),因为油画的主体、容芬的确有一个灵魂。四十二年前的这个八月,当宋彬彬给毛泽东带上红卫兵袖章的时候,19岁的王容芬正站在天安门广场观看。那个时刻是文化大革命中暴君的巨大屠杀的开端。

Millions were caught up in the movement and did the Great Henchman's bidding. Rongfen did something different. She wrote to Mao, comparing him to Hitler, and resigned from the Communist Youth League. She spent twelve years in prison.

上百万的人们陷入了运动中,众多的跟随者也纷纷如此。容芬做了不同的事情。她写信给毛,将他比作希特勒,并且退出共产主义青年团。她在监狱里度过了十二年。


There is a gauzy, ghostly quality to this painting. Seen enlarged, the details of the face merge in the shadows and Rongfen almost disappears. In fact she almost did disappear. She attempted martyrdom by drinking four bottles of insecticide outside of the Soviet embassy, hoping to draw world attention to what was being unleashed.*

在这幅油画中有一种如纱般的,诡异的质感。放大后,脸部的细节融入在阴影中,容芬几乎要消失了。实际上她曾经几乎消失了。她曾试图在苏联大使馆外喝下四瓶杀虫剂殉难,希望她的抗争能够引起世界的关注。*

She survived though, and is now Rongfen Wang, PhD and lives and writes and teaches in Germany. And she has not lost her soul: last year she wrote a devastating critique of Carma Hinton's Cultural Revolution whitewash, Morning Sun.


她活了下来,现在王容芬,博士,在德国居住,写作和执教。她仍然没有失去她的灵魂:去年她写了一篇关于卡玛·辛顿的对文化大革命的粉饰之作《八九点钟的太阳》的辛辣评论。

The Chinese have an ancient, noble tradition of honoring their elders. There are those like Xu Weixin and Gao Qiang and Hu Jie who do honor to those deserving of honor: to Rongfen Wang and Bian Zhongyun and Youqin Wang and Harry Wu. In that tradition the title of Xu 's painting of Rongfen is Student and Teacher.

中国人有尊敬老者的古老的,高尚的传统。像徐唯辛,高强和胡杰他们确实尊重那些值得尊重的老者:王容芬,卞仲耘,王友琴和吴弘达等。在那个传统中徐的容芬的画像的题目是《学生与老师》。

*Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, from whose book Mao, The Unknown Story, this sentence is taken, provide a vivid account of Rongfen Wang's actions (pp 515-516).

*此句引自张戎和乔·哈利戴《毛泽东:鲜为人知的故事》,生动地描述了王容芬的行为(515-516页)。