Yang Ermin: The master of polychrome wash painting

作者：柯弗.兰斯林（Hervé Lancelin）

发布⽇期：2025年3⽉17⽇
英语网站：https://www.artcritic.com/en/yang-ermin-the-master-of-polychrome-wash-painting/

小芳  40×32.5cm 2002  纸本设色

杨佴旻是一位善于打破界限的艺术家，他能够将千年传统与现代融合在一起，激活了传统绘画的潜力，他已成为这个领域的领军人物，将一种古老的技法转化为完美的当代绘画语言。

他能够巧妙地融合传统与现代之间的反差。他如今已成为水墨画领域的领军人物，他将一项古老技法转变为极具当代感的绘画语汇。

各位（或许有些自视甚高的）朋友，请注意：杨佴旻在当代艺术界绝非等闲之辈，他是一位善于颠覆创新的艺术家，精通于融合各种对比元素——悠久传统与现代潮流、恒久的东方与喧嚣的西方、静穆的山水与鲜活的静物。杨佴旻来自中国河北省曲阳，现已成为中国水墨画无可争议的领军者，他将一项传统水墨技法演绎为一种鲜明的当代绘画语言。

我可以花几个小时谈论他惊艳的技艺——其卓越之处不在于技巧本身——例如在宣纸上巧妙地融合墨与色，以及通过反复叠加颜色制造出类似碎裂感的效果，这在他近期的作品中尤为明显。更为重要的是，其重要贡献在于他与艺术史积极互动的同时，又牢牢地立足于当代。

杨佴旻的艺术力量在于他对色彩的哲学性思考，这与对艺术的时间性深刻关联，我们可以运用亨利·柏格森（Henri Bergson）有关时间“纯粹绵延”（pure duration）的概念诠释其作品。在柏格森看来，真实的时间是连续不断的流动，过去与现在彼此渗透。杨佴旻在其画作中极好地呈现了这一点。他将色彩重新引入传统中国水墨画，创造出一种绘画的时空感，让生动鲜活的当下与久远的过去和谐地融为一体。

再欣赏他的风景画——它们并非几个世纪以来中国艺术家笔下山水景致的简单再现，而是时间得以伸缩自如的精神空间。柏格森在其《创化论》中指出：“时间是创造，否则便一无是处。”杨佴旻的画作正体现了这一观点；这些色彩并非是忠实地复制自然，而是捕捉柏格森所谓的“纯粹绵延”，即生命持续运动的本质。

在其画作中，形式同时显现又消散，碎裂的水墨效果体现了意识的绵延不断的流动。柏格森指出：“我们的过去如影相随，又不断地被当下所丰富。”杨佴旻通过视觉艺术呈现了这一观念，他在继承传统绘画笔墨意趣的同时，又吸收了当代色彩的活力。

理解其画作的另一个关键概念，源自艾蒂安·苏里奥（Étienne Souriau）在其著作《论存在的不同模式》中提出的理论——在具象与抽象之间获得平衡。苏里奥认为艺术创造是一种独特的存在，既非纯粹的抽象，亦非纯粹的写实。杨佴旻的静物画正是这种张力的完美体现，在具象与抽象之持续之间摇摆。苏里奥称之为一种“超存在”（superexistence），即超越物质本身、进入一种更高层次的存在模式。苏里奥所说的“艺术是存在的最伟大的强化剂”（Art is the great intensifier of existence），完美地呈现了杨佴旻的艺术追求。

杨佴旻对花卉、瓜果及日常物品的描绘，通过巧妙的“去真实化”处理，强化了其存在感。他的作品并非简单复制现实，而是让现实的另一个更富活力、更为本质的维度得以显现。苏里奥曾敏锐地指出：“艺术并非再现可见之物，而是使不可见之物成为可见。”这句话常被认为是保罗·克利（Paul Klee）的观点，却也恰如其分地概括了杨佴旻的艺术实践。

杨佴旻与《最后的晚餐》 

批评家们或许会带着一丝嘲讽，将杨佴旻视为又一位用现代手法包装传统题材的中国艺术家。但这种看法忽视了他对一种既能超越文化边界、又不失其本源的个人化绘画语言的真诚求索。他早年赴日本留学，获得美学与文学博士学位；后就读于南京艺术学院（原文此处有误，该艺术家在南京艺术学院获得博士学位——译者)，这些经历奠定了其深厚的双重文化根基。

杨佴旻与莫奈、塞尚、梵高等西方大师以及中国传统大师进行深度对话，而非简单模仿他们。这种对话能力使他成为一位真正意义上的当代艺术家，在对传统的眷恋与对新奇的追逐之间游刃有余。他的作品体现了柏格森式的记忆——这种记忆并非对过去的简单援引，而是当下经验的构成部分。

柏格森曾断言：“过去与现在共存：现在是主动的，过去则在行动。”这种共存状态正是杨佴旻艺术实践的写照。将鲜明色彩引入水墨画，并非与传统断裂，而是赋予其新的生命力。他的风景画通常色彩斑斓，这些有机色彩仿佛从水墨中自然生发，与中国传统单色水墨的审美趣味形成鲜明的对比。

苏里奥将艺术创作视为一种对话的观点，有助于阐释杨佴旻的技法。艺术家与媒材——水墨、宣纸、颜料——对话，从而创造出那些看似内蕴着某种必然性与宿命感的形态。他那斑驳、层叠的技法在视觉上呼应了柏格森关于时间是连续经验之累积的观念。

然而，技法服务于一种对和谐的更深层次的追求——一种形态与色彩之间的存在性平衡，这也反映了柏格森将意识视为和谐统一的连续流动的观点。杨佴旻的画作具有一种音乐般的韵律感，它随时间徐徐展开，引人进行长时间的凝思，这与柏格森关于生命时间体验的理念不谋而合。

其近期作品中的破碎感暗示了时间的侵蚀，揭示出层层积淀的肌理，体现了柏格森所言“过去不断侵蚀未来并持续进化”的理念。苏里奥的理论则通过描述艺术存在的多重性——物质上的在场、美学上的意涵、文化上的象征以及自主性的力量——对此进行了补充。

杨佴旻将中西方传统融为一体，这与柏格森的“创化论”——即通过富有活力的创新来保存并转化传统——产生共鸣。他的艺术集中体现了柏格森的“生命冲动”（élan vital）——那股驱动万物进化并在艺术中得到淋漓尽致表达的创造性冲动。

杨佴旻远非一位简单融合东西方元素的折衷主义者。他深刻地介入艺术的时间性问题，创作出柏格森式的“绵延”（duration）与苏里奥式的“超存在”的视觉沉思。他的画作邀请观者不仅是观看，更是全身心地沉浸其中，将之视为与“纯粹绵延”和“被设定的存在”（instituted presence）亲自相遇的体验，这使得他成为当代艺术界一位举足轻重的艺术家。

Yang Ermin: The master of polychrome wash painting 

By: Hervé Lancelin 

Yang Ermin is an artist who destabilizes with his ability to blend contrasts between millennial tradition and modernity. He has become the leading figure in polychrome wash painting, transforming an ancestral technique into a perfectly contemporary pictorial language. 

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, Yang Ermin is not a minor player in the contemporary art scene. He is the kind of artist who destabilizes with his ability to blend contrasts: millennial tradition and modernity, eternal Orient and frenetic West, immutable landscapes and vibrant still lifes. Born in 1966 in Quyang, in the Chinese province of Hebei, this painter has become the undisputed leader of polychrome wash painting, transforming an ancestral technique into a perfectly contemporary pictorial language.

I could talk to you for hours about his prodigious technique, his skill in marrying ink and color on xuan paper, his unique way of applying successive layers until the wash painting fragments and appears worn in his most recent works. But that would be missing the point. For what makes Yang Ermin great is his ability to engage with the history of art while remaining anchored in his time.

Yang Ermin’s strength lies in his philosophical relationship with color, which fits into a profound reflection on the temporality of art. Here, I must invoke Henri Bergson, whose conception of time as pure duration wonderfully illuminates the work of our Chinese artist. For Bergson, real time is not this spatialized time, divided into successive moments like the points of a line, but an indivisible continuity, a perpetual flux where past and present constantly interpenetrate. Isn’t this exactly what Yang Ermin achieves in his painting? By reintroducing color into traditional Chinese wash painting, he does not merely modernize a millennial technique; he creates a pictorial space-time where the most vivid present merges indissociably with the most distant past.

Consider his landscapes. They are not simple representations of mountains and rivers as Chinese painters have produced for centuries. They are mental spaces where time expands and contracts. “Time is invention or it is nothing at all,” wrote Bergson in Creative Evolution ^[1]. Yang Ermin seems to have made this maxim his own: each of his works is a temporal invention. His vibrant colors do not seek to reproduce nature faithfully, but to capture this Bergsonian “pure duration”, this perpetual movement of life that escapes all mechanical measure.

Look closely at his compositions where forms seem to simultaneously emerge and dissolve, where the fragmented wash painting evokes this continuous flux of consciousness of which the French philosopher spoke. “Our past follows us, constantly enriching itself with the present it gathers along the way,” Bergson wrote again ^[2]. Yang Ermin’s works visually embody this conception of time: they accumulate the traces of an ancestral pictorial gesture while absorbing the chromatic vivacity of our time.

And here comes the second concept that seems fundamental to me to understand Yang Ermin: the notion of balance between representation and abstraction found in the aesthetic thought of Étienne Souriau. This French philosopher of the 20th century, in his work The Different Modes of Existence ^[3], develops the idea that art establishes singular beings, endowed with their own existence, neither totally abstract nor simply mimetic.

When observing Yang Ermin’s still lifes, one is struck by this constant tension between the recognizable and the elusive. His floral compositions, his arrangements of fruits and everyday objects perpetually oscillate between figuration and abstraction. Souriau would speak here of a “superexistence” of the work of art, which surpasses its simple materiality to reach a superior mode of being. “Art is the great intensifier of existence,” he affirmed ^[4]. And isn’t this exactly what Yang Ermin does with his colored wash paintings? He intensifies the very existence of the objects he represents, conferring upon them a presence that transcends their daily banality.

This intensification in him occurs through a subtle derealization of the represented subject. His flowers, his vases, his landscapes are recognizable, yes, but they are transfigured by a pictorial treatment that tears them away from their ordinary existence. As Souriau wrote, “art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible” ^[5], a formula generally attributed to Paul Klee, but which perfectly illustrates Yang Ermin’s approach. His compositions do not slavishly reproduce the real; they make visible another dimension of this real, more intense, more vibrant, more essential.

But I can already hear you, with your usual cynicism: “Another Chinese artist recycling old recipes with a zest of modernity to seduce Western collectors!” You are mistaken. Yang Ermin is not posturing; he is engaged in an authentic search for a personal pictorial language that can transcend cultural boundaries without denying its roots.

His training is revealing of this ambition: after studying at the Nankin Academy of Arts, he continued his journey in Japan, where he obtained a doctorate in aesthetics and literature. This dual cultural anchoring allowed him to develop a singular vision, deeply nourished by the Chinese tradition and open to Western influences. He is intimately familiar with Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, but never imitates them slavishly. He dialogues with them as he dialogues with the masters of traditional Chinese painting.

It is this ability to engage in dialogue that makes him a truly contemporary artist. In a world of art often polarized between a nostalgic attachment to traditions and a frantic race for novelty, Yang Ermin forges a middle path, fertile, inventive. His painting is that rare place where time does not flow linearly, but unfolds in superimposed layers, where past and present coexist without neutralizing each other.

Let us return to Bergsonian philosophy to better grasp this phenomenon. For Bergson, memory is not a simple reservoir of memories from which we occasionally draw; it is constitutive of our present experience, constantly coloring our current perception. Similarly, Yang Ermin’s art does not cite the past: it brings it to life in the present of creation. For him, traditional wash painting is not a technique to be preserved as a relic, but a living language to be enriched, transformed.

“The past and the present are not two successive moments, but two elements that coexist: the present is the active element and the past, the element that acts,” wrote Bergson ^[6]. This active coexistence of past and present is at the heart of Yang Ermin’s work. When he introduces brilliant colors into his wash paintings, he does not break with tradition: he makes it breathe differently, gives it a new breath, a new life.

This vitality is particularly perceptible in his landscapes. Unlike traditional Chinese representations where mountains often appear in an ethereal haze, bathed in dark and monochromatic tones, Yang Ermin’s landscapes vibrate with intense colors. But these colors are not artificially superimposed on the forms; they emerge organically from the wash painting, as if they had always been there, in potential, waiting to be revealed by the artist’s hand.

Here again, Souriau’s thought helps us understand Yang Ermin’s approach. For the French philosopher, the artist is less an ex nihilo creator than an “instaurer” who brings forth forms already virtually present in the material. “The artist dialogues with his material, and it responds to him,” he wrote ^[7]. Yang Ermin dialogues with ink, xuan paper, colored pigments, and from this dialogue are born works that seem to have always existed, so necessary and evident do they appear once realized.

This evidence, however, should not make us forget the technical complexity of his work. Yang Ermin is a virtuoso who perfectly masters the traditional tools of Chinese painting, the brush, ink, paper, while pushing them towards unexplored territories. His technique of applying wash painting in successive layers, which eventually fragment and appear worn, visually translates this Bergsonian conception of time as a continuous accumulation of experiences.

But technique is never an end in itself for Yang Ermin. It is in the service of a quest for harmony, a subtle balance between forms and colors that characterizes his entire work. As he himself says: “I seek the balance between forms and colors to achieve harmony in my compositions.” This search for harmony is not merely formal; it has a profound existential dimension, which once again joins Bergson’s thought on consciousness as a continuous and harmonious flux.

For the French philosopher, authentic consciousness is not fragmented into separate perceptions, feelings, or ideas, but constitutes a continuous melody where each note blends into the next. Similarly, Yang Ermin’s compositions do not simply juxtapose forms and colors: they blend them into a fluid movement that evokes this melodic continuity of which Bergson spoke.

There is something profoundly musical in Yang Ermin’s painting, a rhythmic quality that transcends mere visuality. His works are not grasped in a single glance; they unfold over time, inviting prolonged contemplation that echoes Bergson’s conception of time as a lived experience rather than a succession of instants.

This temporal dimension is reinforced by the fragmented, almost worn aspect of his recent wash paintings. The colors seem to have been eroded by time, revealing underlying strata, as if the work contained within itself its own history. Here again, Bergson’s thought enlightens us: “Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances” ^[8]. Yang Ermin’s works literally embody this “gnawing” of time, this continuous erosion which, paradoxically, enriches rather than impoverishes.

At the same time, Souriau’s theory of “different modes of existence” offers us an additional key to understanding the ontological plurality of Yang Ermin’s works. For the French philosopher, artistic objects possess a plural existence: they exist physically as material objects, aesthetically as bearers of sensible values, symbolically as vectors of cultural significations, and really as entities endowed with their own power.

Yang Ermin’s paintings fully manifest this existential plurality. They are at once physical objects (ink and pigments on xuan paper), aesthetic compositions (play of colors and forms), heirs to a millennial tradition (Chinese wash painting), and autonomous presences that seem to radiate a life of their own. As Souriau wrote, “the accomplished work of art has a kind of sovereign presence” ^[9]. This sovereignty is palpable in Yang Ermin’s best creations, which impose themselves on the viewer with a quiet authority.

What is particularly interesting about this artist is his ability to navigate between different pictorial traditions without ever falling into superficial eclecticism. He does not juxtapose Chinese and Western elements; he integrates them organically into a coherent language. This integration recalls Bergson’s conception of creative evolution, where each new state preserves something of the previous states while transforming them.

Yang Ermin’s painting is truly evolutionary in this Bergsonian sense: it preserves the essence of the Chinese wash painting tradition while enriching it with new contributions, notably color, which transform it profoundly without denaturing it. It is a painting that honors its roots while resolutely projecting itself into the future.

One might see in this approach a form of conservatism, a desire to preserve a threatened tradition at all costs. But this would be to misunderstand the radical nature of his artistic project. Yang Ermin does not preserve the wash painting tradition as a specimen in formalin; he brings it to life, makes it breathe, evolve. He embodies what Bergson called the “élan vital”, this creative impulse that traverses the entire evolution of life and expresses itself with particular intensity in art.

Yang Ermin is much more than a clever synthesizer of Eastern and Western traditions. He is an artist who thinks deeply about the temporality of his art, who inscribes each of his works in a fecund dialogue between past and present, between memory and creation. His painting is a visual meditation on Bergsonian duration, on this indivisible continuity of lived time that transcends mere chronological succession.

At the same time, his works institute sensible presences that surpass their simple materiality, embodying this “superexistence” of which Souriau spoke, this intensification of being that is the hallmark of true art. Between Bergson’s temporal fluidity and Souriau’s ontological plurality, Yang Ermin traces a singular path in contemporary art, a path that belongs only to him but invites us all to follow.

So, the next time you come across a work by Yang Ermin in a gallery or museum, stop. Take your time. Let yourself be impressed by his vibrant colors, by his compositions that are both structured and fluid. And perhaps then you will feel what Bergson called “pure duration” and Souriau “instituted presence”, this ineffable quality that makes great works of art not mere objects to be contemplated, but experiences to be lived fully.

For that is what is at stake with Yang Ermin: not admiring from a distance a virtuoso technique or a clever blend of influences, but entering a pictorial space-time where our own consciousness can blossom, expand, merge into this continuous flux of forms and colors that is the signature of this great contemporary Chinese artist.

1. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, Paris, PUF, 1907.

2. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, Paris, PUF, 1896.

3. Étienne Souriau, The Different Modes of Existence, Paris, PUF, 1943.

4. Étienne Souriau, The Correspondence of Arts, Paris, Flammarion, 1969.

5. Étienne Souriau, Vocabulary of Aesthetics, Paris, PUF, 1990.

6. Henri Bergson, Mind-Energy, Paris, PUF, 1919.

7. Étienne Souriau, The Future of Aesthetics, Paris, Alcan, 1929.

8. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, Paris, PUF, 1907.

9. Étienne Souriau, The Different Modes of Existence, Paris, PUF, 1943.

作者简介：柯弗.兰斯林（Hervé Lancelin）是一位聚焦战后艺术、当代艺术和原始艺术的著名收藏家、策展人。他是法国当代艺术收藏家协会ADIAF的成员，该协会与巴黎蓬皮杜中心合作颁发年度马塞尔·杜尚奖。2011年，他担任了马塞尔·杜尚奖的评选委员会成员；自2010年开始，他一直是现代艺术、当代艺术和原始艺术博物馆之友的受托人，经常就当代艺术和艺术收藏的相关主题进行演讲。多年来，他积累了一个美术馆级别的艺术收藏品，包括来自世界各地艺术家的数百件作品。他在卢森堡创立了一个非盈利性机构——卢森堡Pinacothèque美术馆 (Pinacothèque de Luxembourg)，担任总裁与管理者，为艺术家举办展览，并向公众开放。2015年，设立“卢森堡国际艺术奖”（Luxembourg Art Prize），它被列入全球十大艺术奖项之一，旨在为艺术家接触到更多的收藏家和收藏机构搭建广阔的平台。这也极大推动了卢森堡大公国在当代国际艺术中的影响力。

中译者：刘燕、毕业于武汉大学、北京师范大学文学博士。现任北京第二外国语学院文化与传播学院教授、;北京第二外国语学院文化与传播学院教授,海外汉学研究中心主任。曾在都柏林大学、布朗大学、密歇根大学做访问学者，研究领域为世界文学与比较文学、艾略特与乔伊斯研究、女性文学、国际汉学等,出版专著《现代批评之始:T.S.艾略特诗学研究》(2005)、《<<>尤利西斯>:叙述中的时空形式》(2014);编著《翻译与影响:圣经与中国现代文学》(2018)、《詹姆斯·乔伊斯与东方:批评读本》(2018)等。

Maggie Huang(黄思齐)：加拿大麦吉尔大学德桑特尔斯管理学院研究生。