{"id":13421,"date":"2012-09-19T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/?p=13421"},"modified":"2023-09-24T10:47:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T10:47:11","slug":"love-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/zh-hant\/love-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Still-life loss in the works of Jiang Zhi, Araki and Mat Collishaw<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the purpose of a love letter to a deceased beloved? To say everything unsaid or to re-say it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flowers engulfed by fire, the very instant the flame takes hold before the blossom corrupts. There are fifteen in Jiang Zhi\u2019s series, each simply numbered. Each flower is shown alone \u2014 a matching bouquet, a potted plant in bloom, a fallen blossom. Each flower is essentially different \u2014 a bouquet of roses, a calla lily, an orchid. The setting varies: sometimes a monochrome background \u2014 a red lily against a blue background; a white orchid against grey, a violet orchid against a yellow and also a grey-blue canvas, red roses and a red calyx lily against black (\u201cLove Letters\u201d Nos. 6, 5, 3, 9, 11) \u2014 or in the reflective corner of a steel box (\u201cLove Letters\u201d Nos.12, 13), or in receptacles \u2014 two long-stemmed flowers stand on a reflective metal base in respectively a jug and a vase \u2014 against almost homely textured wallpaper. Three bouquets stand in vases on an industrial floor \u2014 tiles, stairs, concrete (\u201cLove Letters\u201d Nos.1, 14, 15).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are not original, are they? In fact, such images seem to exist in constant conflict between the eternal and the clich\u00e9d. In 2005 the English artist, Mat Collishaw, exhibited a series of bouquets also being engulfed by fire (\u201cSomething about the night\u201d). Each image was gilt-framed, the frame itself scorched. It was as if history was burning, the still-lifes of the Flemish masters burning the present. But Collishaw\u2019s blooms were corrupted by the flame, their peak aesthetic vigor diminished (is this not why we buy flowers to give \u2014 as a sign of life bountiful, if momentary \u2014 not because we know they will soon shrivel and brown?). Jiang\u2019s blooms remain perfect (1), eternally idyllic in a way that only untimely death can bring to physical beauty. Warhol knew this too, of course, with his endless Marilyns, the counterpoint being his morbid \u201cGreen Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)\u201d (1963) and \u201cElectric Chairs\u201d series (begun in 1963 and continued for the ten years) (2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jiang Zhi, \u201cLove Letters No. 3,\u201d 2011.
\u848b\u5fd7\uff0c\u300a\u60c5\u4e66 3\u300b\uff0c 2011\u3002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Early this year Jiang\u2019s wife, the well-known writer and critic Wawa (Ren Lan), died suddenly, leaving behind not only Jiang but also two young children. Oft underrated, it would be easy to dismiss Jiang\u2019s images as simply emotive, but simple they are not (compare his \u201cPoetry of Angels\u201d series and the flayed angels made of silica gel with the 8-minute video \u201c0.7% Salt,\u201d showing actress Gillian Chung\u2019s face change from glowing smile to abject tears). Understated but always informed, Jiang, like Wawa, is also a talented art writer. And he and Wawa were always very socially observant, engaged and critical (a good example being Jiang\u2019s depiction of Chongching\u2019s infamous \u201cNail House,\u201d where an owner held out against bullying developers, refusing to leave his house even as the earth all around it was removed \u2014 \u201cThings Would Turn Nails Once They Happened\u201d)(2007). With that series of works, within crepuscular settings individuals in various types of modern clothing (a motorbike suite, a wedding dress) are hit by a beam of light, lifted off the ground by it, shocked by the collision of modernity and history, symbolically echoed in their backgrounds with items such as power poles with garden temples, highways and Buddhist towers. At the impact point the light is so strong there is only obliterating, anonymous whiteness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jiang Zhi, \u201cLove Letters No. 5,\u201d 2011.
\u848b\u5fd7\uff0c\u300a\u60c5\u4e66 5\u300b\uff0c 2011\u3002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1990 the wife of Nobuyoshi Araki, Y\u014dko (\u8352\u6728\u967d\u5b50) died of cancer. Araki is famous for his millions of sordid photos of sordid Tokyo (particularly his popular book Tokyo Lucky Hole<\/em>, 1985) but also for his semi-fictional histories of their romance \u2014 \u201cSummer Journey\u201d (1971) and \u201cWinter Journey\u201d (1991). Subsequently to \u201cWinter,\u201d Araki produced a series of floral still-life homages to his wife. Some were rather simple snapshots, others elaborate concoctions, such as \u201cPainting Flowers\u2019 with close-ups of lush blooms brightly spattered with paint. Some of these works were even titled \u201cLove Letters.\u201d Is it mere accident (or worse, as one critic suggested to me) that Jiang has quoted both Collishaw and Araki?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jiang Zhi, \u201cLove Letters No. 6,\u201d 2011.
\u848b\u5fd7\uff0c\u300a\u60c5\u4e66 6\u300b\uff0c 2011\u3002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A series of still-lifes precedes Jiang\u2019s \u201cLetters.\u201d These present flower stems pierced by hooks, tied with bands of fine wires, sadomasochistic musical instruments but formally also recollecting the light beams in the \u201cThings Would Turn\u2026\u201d series. And that is not all: these bound sexual flowers, but also half a pig\u2019s carcass on a plastic covered hospital bunk, an upturned octopus, two pigs trotters on a log-cutting board, a dead sheep (almost Christ-like), a heart, and a naked man, the wires threaded through his erect cock. Yes, each of these images is painful. Another series by Collishaw, \u201cPunk Flowers,\u201d shows flowers with punk piercings \u2014 chains and hooks. Another by Araki presents almost Helmut Newton-like presentations of women posing in Japanese aesthetic bondage \u2014kinbaku<\/em>. Note too that Y\u014dko Araki was also a respected writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jiang Zhi, \u201cLove Letters No. 7\u2033 2011.
\u848b\u5fd7\uff0c\u300a\u60c5\u4e66 7\u300b\uff0c 2011\u3002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here is what I think: \u201cLove Letters\u201d are love letters \u2014 full of yearning, loss, angst, anger, sex, tenderness, children, life itself, even work, boredom, and frustration, and not only that but also a desire to convey all these things to one\u2019s beloved, whether futile or not. But Jiang knows the weight of clich\u00e9, of platitude, and his critic\u2019s shade stands near him \u2014 is that enough? These are also images of what it is to be a photographer, to make an image of remembrance, how hard \u2014 impossible \u2014 it is to avoid repetition. Somehow all photos are similar, and somehow all deaths are too. Yet to the grieving, death remains as singular as love. The real question, despite whatever intentions lay behind them, is whether the \u201cLove Letters\u201d succeed in escaping mere platitude. In reply, the images of piercings are unambiguous, whereas with the burning flowers a certain doubt remains. Then again, love\u2019s ambivalences lie at the bewitching centre of desire itself and death being the ultimate marker of the unattainable. It is why images of burning paragons are so powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jiang Zhi, \u201cLove Letters No. 2,\u201d 2011.
\u848b\u5fd7\uff0c\u300a\u60c5\u4e66 2\u300b\uff0c 2011\u3002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why did you choose such clich\u00e9s, my love?
<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For you \u2014 to provoke you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(I would like to thank Steven Harris for his sensitive comments on an early version of this article.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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