“Nor does one see in flesh and blood this Thing that is not a thing, this thing that is invisible between its apparitions, when it reappears.”1
— Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx
“非物的大写之物，在多次显现之间不可见的大写之物，即便反复重现，我们仍然看不见它的骨肉。”1
——雅克·德里达《马克思的幽灵》
The dice roll. We are brought to a state of waiting. Confronted by Xie Nanxing’s paintings, the beholder must solve a puzzle: the colorful speckles on the canvas seem to assume a shapeless form, a specter haunting both the beholder and the space.
The dice land on an ordinary number. After attentive observation, the beholder finally recognizes the subject depicted by means of many colorful dots. Lying on the right-hand side of What to Exhibit No. 1 is a kettle in the shape of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Trivial and cheesy, it easily makes the beholder laugh.
At first glance, the painting seems to be a puzzle that obscures and mystifies, yet the answer is in plain sight. The process of solving this puzzle is so absurd that one can’t help but associate Xie’s works with Dadaism. In What to Exhibit No. 1, the floating ghost-like figures are a group of elderly women chatting outdoors, with fans in their hands. In No. 3, a collection of dolls from Yiwu markets are lined up in front of the elevator of the exhibition hall. The Seven Portraits series depicts seven close friends of the artist, with colors and details implying their respective personalities. Xie uses a technique called “leaking” to disseminate colorful speckles to form his paintings. Leaking is used by the artist to produce incomprehensible images, realized by covering one canvas with another, painting on the outer canvas, and allowing the paint to seep through onto the inner canvas. Leaking is a bit reminiscent of the “rayograph” technique invented by American Dadaist photographer Man Ray. Without a camera, Man Ray would obtain a photo by placing objects such as thumbtacks and coil of wire directly on a sheet of photosensitive paper and exposing it to light. By using these nonhuman elements, the outcome is an image where it is difficult to recognize any concrete objects. Even if the beholder is well aware of the artist’s approach, such a process and its resultant product remain largely nonsensical, nonetheless.
A second connection point between Dada and Xie Nanxing can be found in the title of the exhibition, A Roll of the Dice, which represents the artist’s reflection on the concept of chance and randomness. An French word for “chance,” aléa, derives from the Latin alea, which originally meant “dice” or “accident.” It is said that when Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river during his long civil war against Pompey, he declared, “Alea iacta est” (the dice has been cast). Centuries later, Dadaists began to consider chance a productive artistic method: Hans Arp created his collages according to the law of chance, André Breton invented the methodologies of écriture automatique (automatic writing) and hasard objectif (objective chance), while Marcel Duchamp strove to “preserve” (mettre en conserve) chance in his art. Unsurprisingly, with its emphasis on randomness and uncontrollability, Dadaism also sees a revolutionary or subversive potential in chance.
Xie’s A Theater of Waiting series provides a metaphor of how uncontrollable elements can pave the way for art. These three paintings depict scenes of waiting crowds in an airport or an aircraft. No specific signs or symbols indicate the whereabouts of those who are waiting, thereby obscuring the context for the viewer. In these moments of waiting, people’s activities deviate from their original purpose: they were going to take a flight, but the airport is erased. What we see instead is a variety of trivial behaviors. However, as far as the artist is concerned, it is exactly these accidental behaviors that create drama and transform the space into a “theater.”
There is a third resonance between Xie and Dada, which lies in his anti-institutional attitude. Dadaism is fairly indifferent to institutional critique, as it is not interested in analyzing the system nor contributing to its improvement, but takes unconditional negation as a revolutionary gesture. For instance, Francis Picabia wrote: “All you who are serious-minded will smell worse than cow’s shit. Dada alone does not smell: it is nothing, nothing, nothing … Like your heroes: nothing; Like your artists: nothing …”2 In What to Exhibit No. 1, the Snow White kettle represents the everyday objects that have been rejected by the system, here illustrated by the empty exhibition space in the background. The kettle, usually unwelcome in the gallery space, is transformed into a revolutionary storm, an omnipresent phantom that destroys the system. In his 2009 We series, Xie copied three of the nudes that Picabia painted after some Parisian pornographic magazine covers in the 1940s. Of course, while Picabia was one of the founders of Dada in Zurich and Paris, he was never Dadaism’s foremost representative. Later, in 1921, he criticized the Dadaist school and claimed it could no longer create new things. Could it be that Xie regards Picabia as a symbolic figure of active detachment from all art historical interpretation and classification?
I think that there is a subtle but significant boundary between Dada’s unconditional mockery of pre-existing aesthetic criteria and the fuzzy criticism of the market system often levied by condescending art critics. In 1994, after reading three consecutive issues of Esprit on the topic “What are the criteria of aesthetic appreciation today?”, Georges Didi-Huberman wrote an article entitled “On Resentment Lacking in Aesthetics,” in which he fiercely attacked the resentful attitude of French art criticism at the time. Didi-Huberman mentioned that Dadaism was often easily confused with “deconstructionism,” which only revealed how many contemporary critics hated rigorous thinking. In fact, though Duchamp was unabashedly against the institutions of art, he did not consider doing anything insignificant to be a kind of rebellion. Instead, he experimented considerably with optics, materials, and words. Regarding those articles cynically criticizing the art system, Didi-Huberman wrote:
More deeply, where does its effectiveness come from? Because it could easily rush into the most glaring theoretical breaches where the social existence of art has been struggling for some time now … For example, it shows us that a real criticism of the art market, of its influence on production itself, has undoubtedly not been carried out extensively…
Of course, the nullity of this resentment lacking in aesthetics lies in its incompetence and its fundamental irrationalism. It ignores, for example, that it has been a long time since artists themselves – artists of “contemporary art” – have challenged these very theoretical breaches through their works or their positions.3
Can critics really see and understand these expressions that challenge our art system, even though they often seem like random fragments? Henri Bergson has a definition of chance: “Chance is … mechanism behaving as though possessing an intention.”4 For example, it is not by chance that a huge tile falls and crashes on the ground, but it becomes accidental when the tile kills a passerby. It is accidental because some human interest is at stake. At this moment, a human’s bodily mechanism fails, and the mechanism of the tile falling acts as if it had some kind of intention. Isn’t seeing, analyzing, and creating accidents like this equal to breaking away from pre-existing artistic mechanisms in order to trigger new thinking? Didi-Huberman further wrote: “To criticize is to analyze forms – forms of knowledge, for example – in order to substitute others for them: it is, therefore, to create a form at the very least.”5 When I look at Xie Nanxing’s What to Exhibit series, the paintings seem to depict not only an accidental storm literally sweeping over the art system but also a Dadaist anti-institutional gesture that allows for a reflexive critique of art criticism.
Let’s return to looking at the ghostly figures in these paintings. What are the dolls from the Yiwu markets doing? They’re laughing. What are the elderly women in front of the exhibition space doing? They’re chitchatting. As for the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, their exaggerated facial expressions and bodily movements are blatantly risqué. A touch of sexiness and humor, delicately hidden behind the animosity of the apparitions, is the key to understanding the ingenuity and ingenuousness of Xie’s work.
A roll of dice guides us into a spontaneous and reflexive moment.
1 Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx, Paris: Galilée, 1993, p.26.
2 Francis Picabia, “Manifeste Cannibale Dada”, in Dada No.7, 1920.
3 Georges Didi-Huberman, “D’un ressentiment en mal d’esthétique”, in Lignes 1994(22), p.48.
4 Henri Bergson, Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, Paris: PUF, 2013.
5 Georges Didi-Huberman, “D’un ressentiment en mal d’esthétique”, p.50.
骰子一掷，陷入等待的境地。面对谢南星的绘画，观者旋即看到一个谜：画布上斑斑点点的油彩痕迹，聚合成一个形体，却毫无形体，仿若一个鬼魂侵袭了观者的视线和展厅的空间。
骰子落地，一个平凡的数字。反复观看之后，观者终于发现，在《展什么 No. 1》这幅画中，位于画面右侧的那个“渗漏”图像其实是一只以白雪公主和七个小矮人为主题的水壶，俗气和琐碎让人忍俊不禁。
第一眼看上去晦涩难解，实际上却荒谬且平凡。解谜的过程，让人不免联想到达达主义的例子比比皆是：《展什么 No. 2》里，漂浮在画面空间里的人影是一群在户外扇着扇子闲谈的老年妇女；《展什么 No. 3》里有一群来自义乌小商品市场的人偶在电梯跟前列队；而《七个肖像》系列里描绘的也是艺术家在日常生活中非常亲近熟悉的七个人物，画面的色彩和细节暗示着他们各自的性格。在谢南星的绘画中，离散的多彩点状是另一块画布上的图像“渗漏”的结果，画家在正在工作的画布之上放置了另一张画布，并在后者之上绘制图像，故意让这个图像渗透到下方的画布上，从而得到的这个图形随即变得十分难以分辨。“渗漏”有点美国摄影师曼·雷发明的“实物投影”之意。曼·雷在没有照相机的情况下，通过将诸如图钉、金属丝线圈一类的物体直接放在光敏纸上曝光，从而得到一张照片。随着非人为的因素参与其中，观看也变得困难，而即便明白了艺术家的做法，似乎也并不能体会到什么特殊的意义。
达达和谢南星之间有第二个连接点，尤其是此次展览的标题“骰子滚滚”所体现出来的，即对于偶然（hasard）和随机（aléa）的思考。Aléa这个法文词来自于拉丁语alea，它原本就是骰子和偶然的意思（凯撒带兵渡过卢比孔河，计划对庞培宣战之前曾经说过：“Alea jacta est” ，意为“骰子已被掷下”）。是达达主义把随机建立为了一种具有能产性的艺术手段：汉斯·阿尔普运用偶然法则创作拼贴作品，安德烈·布勒东创始了“自动写作（écriture automatique）”和“客观的偶然（hasard objectif）”的方法论，而马塞尔·杜尚则要“罐装”（mettre en conserve）偶然。不出意料，达达所强调的随机，由于侧重于不受控的因素，常常被阐释为具有颠覆既有形式的潜力。
在有关偶然的问题上，谢南星的《等待的剧场》系列似乎为我们提供了一个隐喻，即不可控的随机因素如何能成为艺术的条件。画家描绘的图像基于机场和飞机里人群正在等待的三个场景，但是抽离了可以具体定位的任何文字标识或背景，让他们笼罩在一片白色的虚空当中。在这三个瞬间，有目的的思考和行为实际上处于一种悬置状态（要去乘机，但机场却是被抹除、架空的），只剩下琐碎的日常行为所构成的偶然性，正是这些偶发的行为制造了戏剧冲突，制造了“剧场”。
谢南星之接近达达，还有第三个比较相似的地方，那就是在于对艺术体制的反对。这种反对和机构批判不同，它的意义不在于系统性地扬弃体制的不合理层面，而只在于做出彻底反对之姿态的一瞬间。就像弗朗西斯·皮卡比亚写道：“你们这些严肃的人，闻起来比牛粪还糟。至于达达，它闻起来什么都不是……像你们的英雄：什么也不是；像你们艺术家：什么也不是……”2 在《展什么No.1》的背景中，空空如也的美术馆空间拒绝了日常物品：水壶。虽然处于空间之外，却形成一场风暴，如鬼魂一般侵袭进了体制的每一个角落，仿佛正在摧毁由美术馆代表的艺术体制。谢南星自己在2009年的《我们》系列中，曾经翻画过皮卡比亚1940年代临摹的三张软色情杂志封面的裸女。当然啦，皮卡比亚曾经是苏黎世和巴黎达达的创始人之一，却又不尽然是它的代表人物，后来也在1921年批评过当时的达达流派，说它已经无法创造新东西了。我在想，当谢南星翻画皮卡比亚时，他是不是在借用皮卡比亚与艺术史永远的若即若离，以彻底地拒绝被归类的行动？
在达达对各种既有美学的无政府式嘲弄，和批评家常见的对资本系统的抽象批判之间，有一道非常微妙却十分重要的界限。1994年，乔治·迪迪-于贝尔曼在阅读《精神》（Esprit）杂志三期以“今日的美学欣赏标准是什么？（Quels critères d’appréciation esthétique aujourd’hui?）”后写作了题为《论缺乏美学的不满》（D’un ressentiment en mal d’esthétique）的文章，其中对当时法国艺术评论中常见的不满和憎恶态度发起了非常强烈的攻讦。迪迪-于贝尔曼提到，达达主义常常被和“解构主义”轻易地混为一谈，反倒展现出当时的批评家有多么地厌恶思想。其实，杜尚虽然彻底地反对艺术体制，但并不是觉得做什么无关紧要的事都是一种反叛，反倒是进行了诸多光学、材料和文字的实验。而有关那些犬儒地批评艺术体制的文章，迪迪-于贝尔曼写道：
“（不满）其有效性从何而来？ 因为很容易冲进最明显的“理论缺口”，而由于这些缺口，艺术在社会中已经苦苦挣扎好一段时间了……例如，它向我们展示出，对艺术市场的真正批判、对艺术市场对生产本身的影响的批判，无疑是没有广泛进行的……
而这种对美学的不满之所以无效，当然是因为它在根本上的无能和非理性主义。 例如，这种不满言论长久以来都在无视艺术家本人——“当代艺术”的艺术家，通过他们的作品，以及他们采取的立场，都已经质疑过这些理论缺口了。”3
我们的艺术机制能不能真的去看、看见、看懂这些随机的碎片呢？亨利·柏格森对于偶然有一个定义：“偶然是……假装自己有某种意图的机制。”4 例如，一个花盆掉在地上，并不是偶然，但一个花盆砸在人的脑袋上，就变成了偶然，因为它和人的利益互相冲突；在这个瞬间，人作为一种机制突然失灵，而花盆掉落的机制突然变得好像具有了某种意图。制造这种偶然、分析这种偶然，是不是便动用了潜意识层面的能量，去击中艺术机制的脑袋、让它失灵，以便引发新的思索？乔治·迪迪-于贝尔曼在上文提到的那篇文章中说：“批评，便是分析形式……将形式替换成别的形式：那便是无论如何也要创造一种形式。”5 在展场中看谢南星的《展什么》，我想，它不仅描绘了一场字面意义上的席卷艺术机制的偶然风暴，而试图去评论它，又是用本来就可以被称为具有达达或机构批判精神的作品来批判了艺术批评本身。
让我们回到谢南星绘画《展什么》中那些幽魂形象。来自义乌小商品市场的偶像在做什么？在笑。那些美术馆门口的老年女人在做什么？在扇着扇子闲谈。白雪公主和七个小矮人，他们夸张的表情和动作让人联想到某种低俗的色情玩笑。让我感到尤为真实和感动的，正是谢南星在这些鬼魂之下暗藏的幽默和些许性感。
骰子滚滚，带着我们进入一个自发却充满反思性的瞬间。
1 雅克·德里达，《马克思的幽灵》，巴黎：Galilée，1993年，p.26。
2 弗朗西斯·皮卡比亚，《达达食人宣言》，载于《达达》第7期，1920年。
3 乔治·迪迪-于贝尔曼，《论缺乏美学的不满》，载于《线条》杂志1994年第22期，p. 48。
4 亨利·柏格森，《道德和宗教的两个来源》，巴黎：法国大学出版社，2013年。
5 乔治·迪迪-于贝尔曼，《论缺乏美学的不满》，p. 50。