The Other Verity: A Comprehension of Zhong Shan's Style in Art

by Pi Li
October 1998

There have been three subtle changes in the style of Zhong Shan's paintings. The earliest style first appeared at the time of Zhong Shan's graduation from college. In Red Dragonfly, Blue Dream, Norms, and Eternal Sun City, the earliest works showing his individual style, one cannot find any trace of reality. None of the figures or symbols can be seen in the real world. On the contrary, the paintings present knowledge and information a child would accept. They are simply a combination of segments from childhood fantasy lacking an obvious logical association. As the detail increases, there is much more of a feeling of logic collapsing. The artist's style at this time ban be called "Surrealism".

This "Surrealistic" style, however, is overturned in Zhong Shan's following compositions. At this time, the symbols in the paintings have a greater, through still hazy connection with reality. In these paintings, the artist includes real life scenes such as a man basking in the sun (Siesta), opera figures (Tiny Little Plane), and children playing (Over the Mountains, Through the Woods). These paintings seem to follow the logic of Zhong Shan's childhood. Compared with early compositions, all of these ones had fixed sources. Everything seemingly was arranged orderly.

In As Yet Unfinished Chess Game and Journey to the West produced later, the artist made a step forward, using Tang Sanzang with his four apprentices and Disney characters for indicating a kind of difference and conflict of culture in reality. It can be assumed that this is the most important part among all of Zhong Shan's paintings, for we can find out form it that the artist retained the manners of organizing pictures in his early paintings, while giving the compositions realism.

Then Zhong Shan's paintings changed again. For example, in Inside Orthopedics and Start You Up, this change can be seen in the relationship between realistic scenes and the symbols of individual state of mind. Zhong Shan avoided realistic scenes in his early works and indicated limited reality later, but now his attitude towards reality and how he deals with it are more complex. As we carefully analyze these paintings, we can see that the artist portrays realistic scenes with understanding and imagination of the images in his heart rather than dealing with realistic scenes as symbols and juxtaposing htem with one he images in heart. In comparison to style of previous paintings, the notable features of pieces of these paintings is that the artist does not dispose of reality as symbols any longer, but finds a combination of real world and Zhong Shan's mental world using images as a bridge. In a word, the artist is observing and thinking in the manner of image.

As a whole, when we face with Zhong Shan's paintings we discover these paintings always intangibly put is into a very awkward place: one hand we are appealed by his pictures and driven by a kind of indescribable power to meticulously search every symbol and every detail; on the other hand as we read out the meaning of a number of symbols and connect them, we find we cannot understand entire connect meaning or the artist's logic of organizing these symbols. Then we find there is dualism in Zhong Shan's paintings, that is while there symbols are attracting viewers they are also refusing viewers. How did this situation happen?

Perhaps the real lreasin is the artist we are facing is completely different from the artist active in the art circle. As an artist born in 1970's, Zhong Shan's way of accepting knowledge and thinking is very particular. The artists older than him were growing in a world in which word was media. But with China's open and development, the growing generation's media is image. Actually Zhong Shan is an artist who is growing between image and word. He has characteristic of both two generations. The generation living with word media apparently form their value system easily and preach up the kind of system. Therefore, what was shown in their paintings often was the constitutional elements of paintings with clear intention. While the generation that follows are augmented with image more focusing individualism and personality of their own experiences. So a kind of refusal of thorough interpretation is reflected. It can be said that dualism in Zhong Shan's paintings just is complete reflection of the features of his generation.

The significance of Zhong Shan being an artist of new generation begins to take form. It completely represents that special cognitive feature of his generation. If we go back in to his paintings, we can see what he conveys is by no means symbol or the game of logic. On the contrary, what is reflected in his work is various conflicts of ideas, attitudes, values and knowledge resting in a present realistic China. Especially in his latest paintings, Zhong Shan truly exhibited the similarities and differences between two kinds of ideas from two generation through reality and mentality, as they make peace.

Apparently, some people consider Zhong Shan's paintings lack the present popular focus on reality, which now is being advocated in the art circles. Conversely, carefully consider, is reality really so firm? Do we really keep eye on it every day? Probably, in China nowadays, what Chinese learn in depth is not representative of reality but various conflicts of value and manner behind reality. If we put Zhong Shan into a dimension of age, style and art approach, we find Zhong Shan is kind of artist whose effort lies in his individual way he breaks surfaces of truism, goes through its gaps, to open up contemporary reality in idea.