文 / 劉國松 國立臺灣師範大學美術學系講座教授

與心靜的緣分是一連串的意外。

一九九八年，我已經從香港中文大學退休，回東海大學美術系任教，偶然遇見年輕記者想要採訪我，我很意外，更意外的是，她對藝術的了解廣泛而深入，印象深刻，從此成為忘年之交。還記得心靜有一次來畫室，帶了台中名產「松子酥」當伴手禮，我開玩笑說：「朋友叫我松子，你送松子酥，這不是讓我輸嘛！」那天打麻將果然大輸，朋友大樂，從此看到我就大喊「松子輸，松子輸。」

後來得知心靜要和好友存青，進行單車環球之旅，我很佩服，一個人做事有決心，想到馬上就會去做的人，這是成功人士的特質。這些年，她閱歷豐富文筆流暢的作品，已經在旅行文學建立里程碑，從報章雜誌的藝文專欄和《永不停歇的旅人》一書，也可以看到她對藝術的理解和深厚涵養。

人類的文明史是由兩類人創造出來的。物質文明是科學家，精神文明是由包括畫家在內的藝術家創造出來的。要成為一位科學家，一定先要有自己獨特的思想與理念，要證明這理念是對的，就必須在實驗室裡去做實驗，實驗的結果成功了，才有所發明，有所發明才能稱得上是科學家。畫家與科學家一樣，也要先有新的思想與理念，再不停地在畫室做實驗，去創造表現，沒有創造就不能稱其為畫家。如果古人怎麼畫你就怎麼畫，老師教你怎樣畫你就怎樣畫，完全不知道為甚麼，那等同科學家的助手，不能稱為藝術家了。我在六Ｏ年代，就提出「模仿新的不能代替模仿舊的，抄襲西洋的，不能代替抄襲中國的。」主張，推動中國畫的現代化，八Ｏ時代在大陸各地巡迴展覽與演講，鼓吹「畫室是實驗室，不是傳統繪畫製造的工廠」，引起風潮，皮道堅與王璜生兩位史評學者專家於2001年在廣東美術館策劃「中國水墨實驗二十年：1980-2001」的展覽，41位大陸藝術家展出八Ｏ到ＯＯ年的作品，皮道堅教授也特別要我提供六Ｏ到八Ｏ年代的四件作品，證明我是「實驗水墨」的先驅。

傳統繪畫的教學理論是「為學如同金字塔」，因此學畫要臨摹過去各家各派的技法，先把基礎打好後再求個人的創造，先求好，再求異，這是通才教育的理想，但是我認為「為藝當如摩天大樓」，培養藝術家需要專才教育。過去的金字塔因建築技術差，一定要地基廣闊，才能蓋得高，可說是堆起來的。可是現代的摩天大樓有哪一棟是有那樣廣闊的地基呢？都像一個柱子一樣，上下一般粗，個個建得比金字塔還高。因為現代建築的地基是往下扎，只求專、求精、求深，不求廣，地基打得愈深，大樓也就建得愈高。

所以現代畫家不在於能畫的種類與方法多，而在於你畫的與別人不同，並且把它做得「專、精、深」。你的技巧愈獨創、愈新，將來建得愈高，愈出人頭地。這就是「先求異，再求好」的真義所在。

我在課堂上教導學生拋開筆墨傳統，不要抄襲古人，進而介紹幾種我實驗創造出來的水墨畫新技法給他們參考與啟發，證明不用筆也可以畫出好畫來，然後鼓勵他們一定要能舉一反三，探索、試驗、創造自己的新技法隨後再一再地重複練習。等到把自己創造的新技巧練習好了，能運用自如了，個人的畫風也就建立起來了。

心靜的學畫過程，就是先求異再求好的實踐，二O一四年開始學畫以前，她是作家，從來沒畫過畫，從水拓法開始，不斷實驗發明新技法，大膽揮灑，不斷精進，很快發展出具有個人風格的海洋心象系列，受到專業的讚賞，同時受到收藏家們的肯定，這不意外，有些人的才能是多方面的，絕頂聰明的人，很容易跨到新的領域。

我另外一個學生李君毅也是這樣，他本來念生化系，從來沒學過傳統國畫，在我鼓勵之下轉到藝術系，大二上了我的現代水墨課，不斷實驗新技法，畢業作品《萬歲，萬睡，萬萬碎》一鳴驚人，獲得第一名。

二O一八年，心靜更遠赴上海，到我擔任首任院長的上海視覺藝術學院當代水墨藝術研究院進修，她在學校附近村莊租了一間農舍，破釜沈舟，拼命用功，如我常勉勵學生說的「要成功，先發瘋」，經過一年努力，果然有了很大進步，二O一九年，在結業展展出的「昨日之島」三聯幅和「過眼雲煙」四聯幅深受好評，早在課堂上看到「過眼雲煙」時，就令我眼睛一亮，是我看過她最好的作品。

近兩年，心靜從海洋心象系列拓展到思網系列，風格有了明顯轉變，從青澀奔放到迭獲讚賞與好評，更能把個人的思想透過有辨識度的繪畫語言表現出來，果然在二O二O年大放異彩，作品獲得台北市立圖書館總館典藏、羅葉文學藝術獎評審團獎、法國秋季沙龍展以及香港全球水墨畫大展等海內外重要展覽的肯定。

我以前教學常說「要找一張白紙」，看來心靜不是一般的紙，而是一張「環遊過世界有能量的紙」，才能在這麼短的時間有如此驚人的表現，未來，希望她沿著自己的想法發展深化，不要抄襲別人，定有一片天。

回首這五十年來像一個當代水墨傳教士，到處推廣，看到當代水墨近年來已變成東方畫系的主流，連紐約大都會博物館都策劃「水墨」展，自然感到欣慰，其實，二ＯＯ七年在北京故宮博物館武英殿展覽館開展覽時，已經和自己說這生沒有白活了，未來，希望有更多藝術家投入，使承襲東方文化精神的水墨，為人類文明史做出更大的貢獻。

關鍵字：先求異，再求好、畫室是實驗室、為藝當如摩天大樓、昨日之島、過眼雲煙、思網系列、環遊過世界有能量的紙

----特別感謝劉國松教授，轉載自「記憶維度－2021江心靜當代水墨創作展」畫冊，

Preface: Pursuing Deviation Before Excellence:

by Liu Kuo-sung, Chair Professor in Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University

Translated by JR Lee

My relationship with Hsin-Ching has been a series of serendipitous events.

In 1998, I retired from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and returned to the Department of Fine Arts at Tunghai University as a professor. It was then that I came across a young reporter who wished to interview me. It came as a surprise, but what startled me most was the breadth and depth of her understanding of art. That moment left a lasting impression on me, and we have been lifelong friends ever since. I can recall one particular occasion when Hsin-Ching came to my art studio and brought some songzi su (“pine nut pastries”) as a gift. I said jokingly, “My friends call me Songzi (“pine nut”), and you’re giving me songzi su. Are you trying to get me to lose (since “pastry” in Chinese is pronounced similarly to “lose” or shu)?” Sure enough, I lost big later that night playing mahjong. My friends got a huge kick out of seeing me lose, and from that moment on, they would yell “Songzi shu!” (meaning “Songzi loses!”) whenever they saw me.

When I later learned that Hsin-Ching planned to bike around the world with her friend Tsun-Chin, I admired her even more. One of the characteristics of successful people is they decide what they want to do and just do it. Over the years, her practiced, fluid way of writing marked a landmark in the history of travel literature. Her profound knowledge and self-discipline in the arts can be seen from her artists’ columns in newspapers and magazines to her book The Traveler Who Never Stops.

The history of human civilization is created by two types of people. Scientists create physical civilization, while artists—which includes painters—are the creators of spiritual civilization. A scientist must first have their own unique ideas and theories, which can be proved correct by gathering evidence from laboratory experiments. Only successful experiments lead to inventions, and only by inventing things can one be deemed a scientist. Artists are no different from scientists. They also must have their own ideas and theories, and always be experimenting and creating in the studio. An artist who does not create does not qualify as an artist. If one blindly paints in the styles of those in ancient times or one’s teacher without knowing why, then one becomes no better than a research assistant and cannot claim to be an artist. In the 1960s, I proposed the idea that “imitating the new cannot take the place of imitating the old, and copying Western art cannot replace copying Chinese art”. Through this, I advocated for and promoted the modernization of Chinese painting. In the 1980s, I toured Mainland China to take part in various art exhibitions and lectures. I pushed an idea which gained traction upon other artists: “The art studio is a laboratory. It is not a factory for traditional paintings.” In 2001, two scholars in historical criticism Pi Daojian and Wang Huangsheng curated an exhibition entitled China: 20 Years of Ink Experiment (1980-2001) at the Guangdong Museum of Art which featured the works of 41 Chinese artists from 1980 to 2000. Professor Pi Daojian requested four of my works from the 1960s to 1980s as evidence that I pioneered the concept of “experimenting with ink”.

Traditional pedagogical theory in painting is that “scholarship is like a pyramid”. Thus, when studying painting, one must copy all the various styles and techniques of past artists, with the intent of first laying an expansive foundation before pursuing individual creation. This is the ideal of general education: to “pursue excellence before deviation”. However, I believe that art scholarship is like a skyscraper in that the cultivation of an artist requires a specialized education. Pyramids of old required large foundations with blocks piled one on top of another because that was the technique which required the least architectural skill.Yet, what modern skyscraper requires a wide foundation to be built? The towering buildings are like enormous columns, with an equal circumference from the top to bottom, reaching much higher heights than a pyramid. Foundations in modern architecture are about digging down; they are specialized, precise, and deep, and do not expand excessively outward. The deeper the foundation, the higher the structure can be built.

Thus, the success of an artist in modern times does not depend on how many styles of painting they have mastered, but rather on their ability to paint something different than others, and if their works can showcase “specialization, precision, and depth”. The more innovative and novel technique will lead to a higher building that can stand out more amongst its peers. This is the true meaning behind my alternate philosophy of “pursuing deviation before excellence”. In class, I guide my students in discarding the traditions of brush and ink and refraining from imitating people of times past. I instead introduce them to some of the new ink painting techniques that came out of my own experiments to which they can refer and from which they can draw inspiration. I prove that a good painting can be made without a brush. I encourage them to learn by analogy and to explore, experiment, and produce their own techniques which they can practice over and over again. After they have mastered the techniques they themselves invented, their artistic expression will be untrammeled, and they will have developed their own personal style of painting.

Hsin-Ching’s study of art was the embodiment of the principles of pursuing excellence before deviation. Before she began painting in 2014, she was a writer who had never painted before. She started with ”water-rubbing” (shuituo) and experimented many times before developing her own techniques. Bold in her artistic expression, she was constantly polishing her skills. Before long, she came out with Ocean in My Heart, a series of artwork which highlighted her personal style. Highly esteemed by professional artists, her work also garnered affirmation from collectors. This was unsurprising; some are simply born with a versatile set of talents. These perspicacious individuals can easily make the quantum jump to new fields of expertise. Lee Chun-Yi, another of my students, made the same leap. Having started out in biochemistry, he had never studied traditional Chinese painting. With my encouragement, he transferred to the art department and took my ink painting class his sophomore year. Always experimenting with new techniques, he produced an art piece upon graduation titled Ten Thousand Years, Ten Thousand Years of Sleep, One Hundred Million Scattered which became an instant hit and won first place in his class.

In 2018, Hsin-Ching journeyed to Shanghai to take classes at the Academy of Contemporary Ink Art at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts for which I had been the first department head. She decided to put everything on the line and rented a farmhouse in a nearby village where she worked tirelessly on her art. Her actions were a personification of one of the mottos I often tell to my students to “lose one’s mind in order to gain success”. Sure enough, her artwork saw dramatic improvements over that one short year. In her graduation exhibition in 2019, her triptych The Island of the Day Before and her quadriptych Transience received wide critical acclaim. Transience had first caught my eye in class and is still my personal favorite of all her artworks.

Over the past two years, Hsin-Ching’s Ocean in My Heart expanded into the iNetwork Series where we can see a pronounced shift in her painting style. Her freshman spontaneity evolved into a style that many began to praise and commend, and one that left her more capable at employing the universal language of painting to convey her thoughts. Indeed, Hsin-Ching’s art truly blossomed in 2020, with her works being added to the Taipei Public Library collection, receiving the Luoye Literature and Arts Jury Award, and being featured in major domestic and international art exhibitions like France’s Salon d'Automne and Hong Kong’s Ink Global. I used to teach my students that they “must find a blank canvas”. What Hsing-Ching found clearly was no ordinary canvas, but rather a “piece of canvas that has traveled the world”, as demonstrated in how well she executed her vision in such a short period of time. My hope for her is to carve out her own niche by holding fast to her beliefs and developing her own technique even further without trying to emulate others.

Looking back at these five decades, I feel like I have been a missionary for modern ink painting, promoting the art form all over the world. I am pleased to see that modern ink painting has become mainstream amongst oriental painting, and that there are even ink painting exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. When I saw an ink painting exhibition at the Wuying Hall of the Palace Museum in Beijing in 2007, I said to myself that my life had not been wasted. I hope more artists will join our ranks in carrying on the soul of Chinese culture through ink painting and make even greater contributions to the history of human civilization.

Keywords: Pursuing Deviation Before Excellence, art studio is a laboratory, art scholarship is like a skyscraper, The Island of the Day Before, Transience, iNetwork Series, canvas that has traveled the world