Traces of the Brush

        Zhang Qiang’s fears for the future of calligraphy led him to reflect on its essential nature. In China the earliest pictograms are said have been inspired by the footprints or traces of animals and birds. Zhang Qiang’s starting point was that the whole history of Chinese culture could be seen as a series of traces: some strong, some faint, Others invisible, if the art world accepted that all arts were traces of the culture that produced them. It could perhaps establish some common ground and escape from the endless debate over whether Avant-Garde calligraphy should be pigeonholed as either calligraphy or painting. This line of thought opened the way for Zhang Qiang to explore how the marks left on paper by bush and ink could be seen as the “traces of the spirit”.

        Zhang Qiang sought long and hard to put his own theories in practice by devising a new abstract style of calligraphy. Making little headway in his endeavors. He would resort to working when drunk or immediately after waking from a deep sleep. But even when he was in these “ altered states”, his personality seemed stubbornly to persist in controlling his brush. Zhang Qiang’s experiments were not only proved debilitating, but did not have the desired effect of releasing the strong creative forces, which, he felt sure, were within him.

        It was in the aftermath of his divorce in 1993 that women entered the picture. Their presence was to spawn the creation of an innovative form of calligraphy which Zhang Qiang himself has dubbed “traceology”. However. This was not a smooth process, nor did it lead quickly to success.

        The first female partner whose aid Zhang Qiang enlisted in his experiments was a student of Chinese painting who wrote avant-garde poetry characterized by disjunctions of time and place. As she read her poems aloud, Zhang Qiang would try to write down the words in an abstract way. When he still failed to achieve the effect he was looking for, he began to think that he was getting too old t collaborate with such a “trendy modern miss”, Nevertheless. The pair persisted with their experiments.

        One night Zhang Qiang got the young woman to move his paper while he was writing down on it the words she was reciting, The result were better. But still did not constitute a breakthrough. Then a flash of inspiration made him turn his head away so that he could not see his partner while he was writing, although she could still see his partner while he was writing although she could still see his hand moving the brush. This time the results amazed him. All of a sudden, he had succeeded in freeing himself from all the restrictions imposed by the conventional composition of characters. Over the next year or so he and the same partner produced another forty or fifty pieces in this manner.

        In 1995 Zhang Qiang started working with other creative young women: first a calligraphy student, then a filmmaker, then a designer. He was soon struck by the fact that he was obtaining the best results from working with the filmmaker-the only one of his four partners who had no knowledge of either panting or calligraphy.

        The more he conducted these experiments. The more Zhang Qiang felt that they should be carried out on a much broader scale. By working with a partner he had already created a distinctive form of calligraphy. By collaborating with a large number of partners he could create a whole artistic phenomenon. They must all be women, he insisted, since the difference between the sexes was a fundamental cultural and social divide and a powerful creative inspiration. In 1996 this led Zhang Qiang to embark on his five –year project “Zhang Qiang’s report on the study of Traces”. It was to involve cooperating individually with 100 different women.

        The nature and scale of the project raised many a Chinese eyebrow. Some feminists accused Zhang Qiang of male chauvinism; after all, he did always explicitly take the lead, his brush could be seen as a phallic symbol, and his female partner was invariably relegated to the secondary role. Others voiced darker suspicions. Despite Zhang Qiang’s repeated assertion, he never entered into sexual relations with his artistic partners.

        He prepared his Traceology Report (as it became generally known) very thoroughly. With each of the 100 women he created eight separate works, every one of them carefully documented. The woman would always decide on the type of brush, size of paper and amount of ink to be used. As she began to move the paper, Zhang Qiang would start writing sentences of real characters. In styles ranging from regular to cursive, according to his mood .The sentences he wrote out were usually fairly mundane thoughts that happened to be running through his mind. Rather than the words of great Chinese poets or any of the poems he himself writes in classical style. The woman was never aware of what he was writing. And it was always she who decided when the session should finish.

        Most of the volunteers who took part in the project found it an enjoyable, even a liberating experience to be instrumental in the creation of Zhang Qiang’s art. One of his assistants, a South Korean housewife, was so pleased with the out come of their collaboration that she danced for joy. She claimed that the experience had evoked happy memories of her uninhibited childhood.

        The “tracelogy” collection is best viewed en masse. It then becomes clear that in some cases exist within groups of works created with the help of the same woman. It is also interesting to note that when Zhang Qiang asked his partners which of their own eight pieces they liked the best. Even those who knew nothing about art tended to choose the one he himself preferred.

        Zhang Qiang has described and analyzed the whole “tracelogy project” in a book entitled Trace Aesthetics, Cultural crossovers through Art. In it he says that during the project he felt as if he was using his brush to construct a building while his partner was exerting an elemental force, like an earthquake to destroy the whole structure. For him the shattered traces recall the moods of the women whom he worked with. Others. However. Feel that they are like a Chinese version of the Rorschach inkblot test. With viewers projecting their own preoccupations on to what they see before them. One critic, Zhang Yiwu, sees Zhang Qiang’s traces as representing universal issues such as the uncertainties of the post- Cold War era and concerns about sexuality and biotechnology.

Traceology in Three Dimensions

        When Zhang Qiang was invited to take part in the exhibition “Women’s art in the Twentieth Century” in 1998. He set about creating a different from of traceology. Having already turned his calligraphy from a scholarly artistic pursuit into an exploration of the use of space in two dimensions. He wanted to experiment with more independent visual forms in three dimensions. He focused on the two most basic three-dimensional forms: the cube and the sphere. Zhang Qiang believes that these forms lie at the heart of Western art and so can act as a bridge linking East and WEST. To emphasize His installation works consist of long strips of paper on to which his female assistant work on one section of the paper before unfolding the next. The woman decides whether she will lay the objects on the paper one by one as each becomes ready or wait and position them all at once.

        In addition to using plastic balls to suggest links between Eastern and Western art. Zhang Qiang also employs them in a purely Chinese context, aptly working with only Chinese female partners. For example, some of his works feature Taiji balls bearing the symbols of yin and yang, which represent Daoism. In 1999 he used these at the Retrospective of Chinese Modern Calligraphy at the End of the Twentieth Century’ in Chengdu, in a installation he called the Green City Mountain after a local mountain famous for its Daoist temples. The Daoist belief in the essential harmony between man and nature has also inspired him to have his female partners throw their decorated white plastic balls into rivers. Where they rotate as they float across the moving water.

        Women are even more central to Zhang Qiang ‘s art when their own bodies become the medium on which he paints. He has worked in this way with young Chinese women wearing black one –piece swimsuits, in order to create a harmony between their black costumes. Their black hair and the ink he is applying to their exposed flesh. As before, the woman selects the brush that Zhang Qiang will use and decides how much ink he will have at his disposal. Turning away, he holds up his inked brush and starts writing, in the air, whatever thoughts are running through his mind. His partner, who can see the movement of the brush, brings her body into contact with it at will. Again, it is she who decides when the performance should stop.

        Having been very pleased with the out come of such work, Zhang Qiang would like to expand on the theme by creating a large out door installation in collaboration with 100 blonde women. Wearing white swimsuits and wearing the ink marks he has painted on their bodies, the women will all gather and interact in the warm, shallow waters lapping a coastline of golden sand. If and when this dream ever materializes, its location is much more likely to be somewhere like Hawaii than any beach in China.

        Zhang Qiang has already done a series of works featuring women in white. He has been collaborating since 1999 with a Beijing fashion designer specializing in Western styles, who makes dresses for him out of white calligraphy paper. These often-elaborate creations are then put on by professional models, which assist Zhang Qiang in his art by allowing him to paint on the paper dresses they are wearing.

         Another grand scheme Zhang Qiang has in mind is one that would require the cooperation of supermodels from the major western fashion houses, Wearing white dresses that he had decorated with his brush, they would strut in turn down the catwalk in an impressive performance of abstract calligraphic art.

         Although all art to some extent reflects the society in which it is created, Zhang Qiang does not consider his own work a direct manifestation of the changes that are currently taking place in China. He does, however, maintain that the very fact of his being permitted to perform and exhibit such innovative Avant-Garde art demonstrates how much attitudes in china have altered over the past decade.

         Zhang Qiang has adopted a brave artistic approach to stimulating debate about perceptions of calligraphy and their cultural implications for Chinese society. One of his great strengths in doing so is that no one can accuse him of simply waving his brush about like an undisciplined child.

He is a scholar and a professor, widely respected for his knowledge of the history and theory of both Chinese and Western art. His Avant-garde calligraphic performances are not only attractive and innovative, but carry a frisson of sexual excitement. Zhang Qiang is determined to explore his ideas further. Meanwhile, he is bracing himself fore the day when a female artist reverses his concept and puts men in the submissive role.