第三十六篇 花臉繪畫藝術

畫家千嶂手中的那支筆表現得輕松自如，山水、花鳥、任務，無所不能，尤其精于“花臉”的表現。

The painting brush of the Chinese artist Qianzhang paints easily: mountains, waters, flowers, birds, human figures – there is simply nothing that the brush fails to paint. Above all, it feels most at home when painting hualian.

“花臉”，又稱為“凈”，是戲曲表演中的一個行當。京劇中的凈分為正凈、副凈和武凈。人物的忠、奸、善、惡、俠義都可從那張臉上表現出來，它的本身就是一種符號化的立體藝術。把這種立體藝術移栽在紙上，使之變為平面藝術的，在畫界也不乏其人。一種是依樣畫葫蘆，在紙上畫著真真切切的臉譜，另一種是戲曲人物畫，把特定的臉譜和特定的人物結合起來，頗有舞臺速寫的韻味。

Hualian, also known as jing, is a major role in China’s theatrical performing tradition. In Peking Opera jing includes the categories of leading, assisting and military jing. A particular way of painting jing’s face represents a particular identity of the concerned role in a play: it may be a loyal, wicked or good man, or a villain, or a chivalrous hero. The masked face itself is a symbolized work of stereoscopic art. The effort of transplanting stereoscopic art on paper to produce works of plane art is not an isolated phenomenon in the art community. Such work, more often than not, follows one of the two approaches, one of which is to create on paper an exact copy of a masked face, and the other to paint a theatrical figure portrait, casting a particular figure in a mask, quite similar to the work of stage sketches.

而千嶂筆下的花臉不是這樣，他離開了特定的人物、特定的臉譜、特定的劇情，以超越的視野，橫掃大筆，洋洋灑灑，把花臉畫的更加抽象化，夸大了花臉的象征意義，進入一個試圖表現人類心靈的全新境界。在進行這種藝術探索時，畫家有著獨到的悟性和心得。他跳開了傳統戲劇花臉的那種凝固的程式，為古老的花臉藝術架起了通向現代人心理的橋梁，潑寫著人世間的喜怒哀樂。這個從平面到立體的過程，形成了時空藝術的瞬間閃現，天真爛漫而不悖理性精神的美學，使畫家的思想自由馳翔，令其筆下生輝。

Qianzhang’s hualian, nevertheless, represents a different approach to painting. Feeling himself from the rigid commitment of being truthful to stereotypical theatrical figures, masks and plots, he paints quite freely and skillfully. His more liberal vision gives birth to the kind of hualian which is characteristically more abstract and more lavishly exaggerated in terms of its symbolic meaning. In this brand-new realm the artist attempts to best reveal the mind and soul of mankind. In his search for a particular mask-painting art, the artist works with a unique understanding for his object of creation. Ignoring the frozen traditional formula, the artist remains dedicated to constructing a bridge that connects the ancient art of hualian mask painting with the psychology of the modern man, brushing out human joys and sorrows. The transition of the theatrical mask art from a plane form to the present stereoscopic model represents the instantaneous flashes of the so-called time-space art.

醉漢是寫不出詩的。太清醒了，也寫不出詩的。畫畫也是這樣，總是在似醉非醉的狀態忠進入佳境。我總說千嶂的花臉有醉的韻味，那是一種朦朧美與流動美的結合。說它是朦朧的，那是墨彩交融而非混沌不清。書法用筆的參入，給畫帶來了流動的節奏。這是一種剛與柔、動與靜、清晰與朦朧相統一的藝術效果。

An intoxicated mind writes no poems. Nor does a completely sober mind. It is also true of painting. The best state of creation is one when the artist is partially drunk and partially sober. When I say Qianzhang’s hualian smells of drunkenness, I mean that to be an embodiment of obscure beauty with flowing beauty, obscure as the result of mixing ink and color, obscure but not murk. His calligraphic paintbrushing brings flowing rhythm to the work of mask painting, thus achieving an artistic effect of a harmonious combination of firmness with gentleness, of mobility with tranquility, and of precision with obscurity.