Jan. 20, 2022

"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man," wrote Dostoyevsky.

I visited Auschwitz for the first time in December 2018. It was awe-inspiring—–absolute symmetry wherever you looked, beneath the vast sky, snow covering the remnants of brutal logic and insane rationales—that horrifying “will to power”… and the snow, “What brings me close to God is the silence of snow.”* I desperately wanted to capture that scene. But after Paul Celan, a Jew, and Anselm Kiefer, a German, how could my attempt, as a young Chinese artist, be anything but laughable? I knew then that Auschwitz was an empty place—–without humans, without life. Like a Rothko painting, its “beauty” depended on that emptiness. But how does one paint emptiness?

Now, driven by the external world, which I call “life” (I was advised that painting celebrities might gain my work some short-term attention), should I place a celebrity into that empty place? How vulgar! Where is the art in that?

Jordan Peterson’s fan base is largely young men. In his rise to fame, he has become a priest-like figure for them: guiding them through the rites of initiation as they transition from the maternal world into masculine spirit. When I watched him return to his YouTube Q&As after his paralysing “health crisis” in 2020, he still managed to articulate everything with brilliance. But this time, his rationality was punctuated by emotional breakdowns—–a fragile man sitting in front of the screen, trying his best to hold on to his rational mind… to hold on to “the bulwark of law and order”, which Jungian psychology symbolically associates with “heaven.” A struggle between rigid masculine rationality and devouring feminine chaos… Can I bring that into an image?

During the trip, I traveled from Auschwitz to Berlin. Visually, Berlin continued the masculine power I felt at Auschwitz—–solemn straight lines brutally dissecting space under the silent infinite sky… a terrible beauty! Could this be a psychological symptom of what Erich Neumann calls “patriarchal castration”*? The ego over-identifies with the father-god archetype or patriarchal authority, leading to “heavenly inflation” or “annihilation through the spirit.” In this state, the ego loses touch with its earthly, instinctual aspects, leading to an imbalance between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche. Is this the link between the sitter and the setting?

An aesthetic principle: "反者道之動 The opposites drive the Way" (Tao Te Ching).

*Orhan Pamuk, Snow

*In Erich Neumann's The Origins and History of Consciousness, "patriarchal castration" refers to a psychological process where the ego becomes disconnected from its creative and life-affirming energies due to an over-identification with patriarchal authority figures and norms.

Jan. 21, 2022

Will ––– the intellectual inclination towards the Good

Idolatry ––– the intellectual misperception of the Good

Jordan Peterson often spoke about his collection of Soviet “propaganda art,” including many portraits of Lenin. By the time I was born, the idolisation of Mao had already fallen out of fashion in China. But before my time, for decades, Mao’s image dominated Chinese painting. 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation had collapsed into grotesque inauthenticity and intellectual desolation. That mad cult of personality created a moral and aesthetic vacuum, and I grew up in it.

Auschwitz, is another extreme manifestation of idolatry. 

“Evil, be thou my Good.”* ––– a misapprehended good. 

Both Christian and Confucian philosophers hold that Good is the natural inclination of the human soul ("人之初性本善 We are inclined towards the Good by nature”). Aquinas suggests that as long as this innate desire for the Good—–or in theological terms, God—–exists, we will create our own gods, substitutes for the true God. For instance, materialism becomes a form of idolatry when the highest Good is equated with fame, money, or power. The substitution of a higher good, whether deliberate or unconscious, constitutes idolatry.

* John Milton, Paradise Lost

Jan. 29, 2022

Symmetry –– Asymmetry

Trying to make the buildings (background) symmetrical, for the man (foreground) is asymmetrical. 

According to the Zohar (text of the Jewish Kabbalah), both good and evil originate within God. When a balance exists between the divine polar opposites, goodness flows into the world. However, if an imbalance occurs, evil lashes out. Human actions affect this divine equilibrium, determining the manifestation of either good or evil.