Another characteristics developed during this period is Wu’s comic-strip style. It is similar to the tradition of caricatures that have facial sketches and the deformation in bold and black lines. They both attempt to use the same sense of humor to provoke the viewers and further manifest the absurdity of political situation (Dong 62). Wu’s iconography is like a
“graphic commentary” without any presupposed any political positions. It speaks for most of the people. He considers his own images maladroit compared to the editorial cartoon which aims at ingenious appearance29. He not only makes caricature of the political figures, but also designs his painting carefully. Take the face of each political figure for example. He mixes the personality with his facial features to produce his own political icons which are not just simple cartoon sketches. The faces of the figures in his works do not look the same as the models. Therefore, it gives viewers an impression that the identity of his figures oscillate. As such, Wu claims that the figures in his painting are in a style of his own realism where he creates the figures only by his arbitrariness. The similarity that his works share with the editorial cartoon is that they both comment on social issues and political figures, government official in particular. In addition, their images have a common feature that they are easy for
29 Shih-hang Chou, phone interview, 5 Jun. 2007.
the readers or viewers to understand. The funny subjects shown in the caricatures are
constituted by the ridiculous, asymmetrical and disproportional drawing, which is one of the sources of Wu’s grotesque images.
In the huge-size facial close-up portraits in the exhibition of Four Eras (Fig.6-9), he does not paint realistically, but exaggeratedly. Overstating the details of each face in order to focus on the facial expressions of the four political leaders, he tries to record the transformation of them in four pictures. However, some critics associate him with the Pop Art icon of Andy Warhol. Wu comments that he is not satisfied with it. Andy Warhol indeed gives him some inspiration, but the conceptions are different30. Warhol’s famous block-print works of celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe, are aiming at reflecting the consumer society. It is the commodified object that he wants to show. Another important point that differs Wu from Warhol is that his icons have a profound relation with the Chinese literary tradition. Wu stated that he tried to borrow the method of the biographical writing in history to exhibit the
exaggerated facial expressions. The grotesques of these works are connected with ancient physiognomy. What the political strongmen look like results from what they are thinking and how their behaviors are. Wu calls it “Biographic Realism”(「傳記繪畫寫實主義」) (Pan 88).
Despite the idea from the Chinese literary tradition, Wu also shows his icon with the types of facial makeup in Chinese opera, which enhances the visual impact. In the tradition of the facial makeup in Chinese opera, the colors and the lines on each face are clear-cut and full of meanings. The most representative of the red color on the mask is Kuan Yu (關羽) during the period of the Three Kingdoms (A.D. 220-280), and it stands for the royalty and bravery.
White color indicates scheming and treacherousness; for instance, Tsau Tsau (曹操) during the period of the Three Kingdoms and Chin Kuai (秦檜) in Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960- 1279).
Black mask in Chinese opera symbolizes the character of fierceness or impartialness which
30 Yi-chung Lu, “Tumbling in the Wave of History: The Four Eras of Wu Tien-chang’s Iconology,” Lion Art 235. 1990.
can be found in Chang Fei (張飛) during the same period. Therefore, the intention of Wu’s icon is getting obvious. These three colors, red, white and black, are the main tones for the political icons. Wu grasps the meaning of these colors to make allegoric evaluations of the four “great-men,” and it is his intention to criticize their merits and demerits. Besides,
different from Andy Warhol’s celebrity icons, it is evidential that Wu utilizes the techniques of caricature to convert the authoritative figures into the easy ones to access. Wu does not keep the outlines of the photographs; instead he reconstructs the portraits as caricatures. Even so, Wu’s conception about political icons still strikes the viewers because their faith constructed by the authority is reconstructed again. Now the viewers can be aware of the myth that there is no God-given or god-like leader as before.
Wu’s iconoclastic paintings during the period when martial law is being lifted in Taiwan are the necessary steps to start contemporary arts in Taiwan. I consider his grotesque icon a successful device to express his critical vision about the contemporary social conditions in Taiwan. Four Eras is a series of four pictures as each represents a leader’s attitude toward a specific social event. The leaders may not be the brilliant heroes we know of from the
textbooks or some official propaganda; in some special social events, the political leaders are just like the abnormal people or the moral monsters that only care about themselves. Wu’s grotesque images attempt to eliminate the sacred elements from political portraits and also form a force against the elite and upper-class culture and art. He provides an opportunity for the audience to touch upon the political issues which used to be brought up only in a very serious way. During this period, Wu builds up his unique style by making the four leaders shown in grotesque appearances. Although he cares about the social issues so much that he creates this series to speak for the people, he does not have any work about the folk during
this period; he has only used grotesque to recapture the political figures. Wu uses the grotesque images of the leaders as the overture of his grotesque carnival series. The images successfully depict the four leaders; however, there is nothing about the transgression power of the civilians shown during this period. It was not until the second period that the grotesque images of the civilians can be seen. In the next chapter, I will analyze the images and adopt supportive theories to distinguish their differences.
Chapter Three
The Uncanny Grotesque in Wu’s Works from 1993 to 1996
In Wu Tien-chang’s works during the second period, the grotesque figures transform from the political strongmen to ordinary people. During this period, Wu built a collective memory of Taiwanese’ experience by interpreting his personal history and experience through his own observation. He witnessed the transition of Taiwan from an agricultural society to a civil society. During this time, he observed the birth, aging, illness and death of his close relatives. He chooses to use his personal memory as a metaphor of the collective memory of contemporary Taiwanese. It is the experience of “death” that enhances the grotesque
characteristic in his works during this period. He uses Taiwanese local popular culture and nostalgic style of painting to present feminized figures within picture frames. The
old-fashioned presentation shows the irretrievable past, and Wu uses it to represent the death.
I select several representative works that soundly present Wu’s grotesque aesthetics from his series from 1993 to 1997 for discussion, including On the Damage of “Spring and Autumn”
(《再會吧春秋閣》), Dream of Past Era I-V (《春宵夢 I-V》), and Endless Love in Temporal World (《紅塵不了情》). The selection is approved by Wu in my interview31, and it is also the selection that is most mentioned by art magazines and catalogs. In this chapter, I will
demonstrate the secularization shown in Wu’s grotesque portraits by adopting Russo’s theory of female grotesque. Also, I will apply Roland Barthes’ ideas about photography to analyze Wu’s grotesque images which can evidently be regarded as an embodiment of death.
3.1 The Grotesque of Uncanny
Adopting Foucault’s argument on normalization, Mary Russo points out that
31 Shih-hang Chou, personal interview, 1 Nov.2006.
“normalization is one of the great instruments of power in the modern age” (Russo 1995: 10) and the grotesque can only be recognized under a condition related to a norm. If the grotesque transgresses the norms, it will involve serious risk (10). However, Russo remarks in The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity (1995) that risk is “a condition of possibility produced […] by the normalization of the body across disciplines in the modern era” (10-11).
In her argument, “the discourse of risk” has the possibility for “[introducing] the grotesque into this space which ‘leaves room for chance’ [emerging] within the very constrained spaces of normalization” (11). The concept of the grotesque cannot be produced without comparing to the rules, the norms or the regulation. Hence, they are not just on the opposite sides, but also in the complementary relation.
Russo’s concern about “the female body as grotesque” (3) is the foundation of her discussion. The female grotesque indicates a body image which is ugly and deviant from the expectation of the society. Male viewers are frightened by female grotesque showing directly in front of them. Female quality is expected to be “quiet and beautiful,” so an exaggerated grotesque characteristic in a female image is considered offensive for the patriarchy32. The active side of female grotesque is confirmed by Russo’s theory, which is helpful for me to survey Wu’s art pieces. Russo points out two kinds of grotesques which will be shown in my discussion. One of them is the “comic grotesque”, which is associated with Bakhtin’s theory in Rabelais and His World. It is “associated with the active, civic world of the public,” and is related to “class formation” (8). It is the grotesque of carnival which is not fixed and
diversified (Russo 58). The comic grotesque will be discussed further in the next chapter which emphasizes the third period of Wu’s works.
According to Russo, the other kind of grotesque connected with Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature and Freud’s “On the Uncanny” is the “the grotesque as
32 Jui-chi Liu, “Cindy Sherman’s Grotesque Parody,” Chung Wai Literary Monthly 32.7 (2003): 66.
strange and uncanny” (7). This type of the grotesque is a “cultural projection of an inner state”
(9). Based on the notion of the uncanny in Freud’s essay, it belongs to “the realm of the frightening,” but sides with “the beautiful, the grandiose and the attractive […] with feelings of a positive kind” (Freud 1919: 123). The notion of uncanny “represent[ing] an exploration of unfamiliar territory, the sublime territory of unfamiliarity itself” (Haughton XIII) reveals the dark side of the grotesque, which literally originates from the cave33. As the definition of the word heimlich/ unheinlich in German denotes, unheinlich (uncanny) is “everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden and has come into the open” (Freud 132). It is a
repression linked with the uncanny element that estranges us from what we were familiar with (148). The uncanny grotesque has a positive feeling for “the beautiful, the grandiose and the attractive”, but the aesthetics is more taken as “the feelings of repulsion and distress” (123).
Unheimlich, a German word, means “uncanny” and “eerie” in English and is the “the opposite of Heimlich, heimisch, vertraut34” (124). The prefix “un-” in the word means to arouse
“uneasy, fearful horror” (131) rather than simply giving a contradictory meaning to the root of the word. For Freud, the concept of unheilich in fact is based on the contrary meaning of “[the]
uncanny (das Unheimliche, ‘the unhomely’) [that] is in some way a species of the familiar (das Heiliche, ‘the homely’)” (134). The uncanny grotesque is defined by the denotation of the German word and then demonstrated by Freud’s analysis. In the essay of Uncanny, Freud brings up that E. Jentsch’s waxwork figures, dolls and automata confuse people by the lifelike appearances, which create the effect of the uncanny (135). In the story of The Sandman
written by E. T. A. Hoffmann, the readers may take the animated doll, Olimpia, as the motif of the uncanny. However, Freud further points out another motif which is about the sandman,
33 “Grotesque (both noun and adjective) and the words which correspond to it in other languages are ultimately derived from the Italian. La grottesca and grottesco refer to gratta (cave) and were coined to designate a certain ornamental style which came to light during late fifteenth-century excavations, first in Rome and then in other parts of Italy as well, and which turned out to constitute a hitherto unknown ancient form of ornamental painting.” (Kayser, 19)
34 In German, heimisch is closed to “local, native, domestic; (feeling) at home” and vertraut is analogical to
“familiar” (159) according to the translator’s note of David McLintock.
who tries to tear out children’s eyes if they do not go to bed on time (136). The fear of losing eyes is an anxiety of castration35 in a psychoanalytic point of view (139). Nevertheless, Freud deems that “the evocation of an old childhood fear” in The Sandman “[does not] derive from the infantile fear, but from an infantile wish, or simply from an infantile belief” (141). The animated dolls awaken the viewers’ fear and desire at the same time. Freud explains that children are not afraid of their dolls becoming alive, but on the contrary, they wish they were alive and even treat them like they were living creatures. The concept of the uncanny is now separated from the causation of fear, and it explains why the uncanny figures not only frighten but also attract people.
3.2 The Themes of Wu’s Works during Second Period
Freud thinks that The Sandman is uncanny because Nathanael’s fear of the sandman comes from the unconsciousness. It is incomprehensible but familiar to the readers36. Wu displays uncanny grotesque figures that, under his brush-pen or camera, are far from ordinary.
However, the models that he uses in his works look nothing more than just ordinary people.
They are not the royals or saints but some gloomy women, kids, and campy boys. They are the people around us or the ones haunting our memories. For example, the ladies from Chinese old calendars, who are not contemporary people but appear in daily commodity, particularly in the antique posters, have become trendy in many restaurants and even in fashion industry nowadays. In addition to the antique photos from the agricultural society in Taiwan, many posters or calendars from old Shanghai are also producing the theme of revival.
Therefore, although most people have not been to Shanghai, they are familiar with the images of Shanghai legacies. They remind us of the good old times for the older generation or the
35 As Oedipus pulls out his eyes in the end of the story, losing sight in psychoanalysis is the “mitigated form of the penalty of castration” (139).
36 “The Uncanny,” Critical Terms. ed. Kate Liu, Fall 1999, National Taiwan University. <
http://hermes.hrc.ntu.edu.tw/lctd/asp/theory/theory_works/3/study.htm >
mass media. Besides the female images in the calendars, there are girls posing in the pictures in an old salon style in Dream of Past Era II and Dream of Past Era IV. Wu tries to recapture the atmosphere during the period when Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese37. Both the pinup ladies and the salon maidens imply that they are things “that-has-been” (Barthes 77) from the past, which are invoked by Wu’s artistic skills.
During this period, Wu’s painting subject changes from half-length to full-length portraits in photographic frames. Wu adopts photography as the main method of his artistic creations. It shows his concern about the dialectical relation of what is real and what is unreal.
He manipulates the technique of set-up photography to highlight the mechanism of shooting (Yao 72). Wu says in many interviews that he wants to create a style of affectation38. He believes that it is the typical character of the Taiwanese culture. He points out “the
characteristics of Taiwanese aesthetics [are] tacky, fake aesthetics” (Pan 141). Taiwan had been colonized for a long period of time, and the KMT government had had the ambition of recovering mainland China. Owing to these reasons, developing and reconstructing of Taiwan at that time were not the focal aims in the national policy. Illegal lofts on corrugated iron roofs, which can be built up and torn down in a short time, are common in Taiwan. Wu points out, as we can see in the parks or gardens, that concrete poles have substituted the real bamboo and masonite boards have substituted the real marble (Pan 141). Everything can be simulated.
This kind of style may look cheap or be considered ugly in traditional aesthetics, but it inspires Wu, who thinks that it is the unique aesthetics of Taiwan, and it also presents the history and particular time-space of Taiwan. Therefore, he uses substitutes or fake materials to embody the “Taiwanese disposable culture39” (台灣替代文化), which insinuates his anxiety
37 Hsueh Haui-Chi, “The Feminized Meanings of Wu Tien-chang’s Works in 1990s,” diss., National Cheng Kung University, 2003, 45.
38 Wu always uses artificial materials to decorate his works and asks his model to pose affectedly. Everything is designed, and nothing is natural in his works. It is the style of pseudo he has in his works.
39 Pan An-yi uses “Taiwanese substitute culture” in his article “Contemporary Taiwanese Art in the Era of Contention.” However, according to his context and my interview with Tien-chang Wu, I think it should be
of impermanent and his nostalgia for the old fashion. As we can see in the series of Dream of Past Era, the ladies are not brand-new for us. There may be original images that Wu refers to.
Two of them (1994; fig. 14, 1996; fig. 16) share the style of the old calendar pictures40, which belong to the collective memories about the past. The old calendar pictures which were originally used for promoting all kinds of products presented a better life or fashion for the consumers in China and Taiwan. However, after Wu’s handling, they become familiar to us He replaces the eyes of the figures with plastic flowers, masks or sunglass. To make them look different from the original old calendars, he also plays tricks in the color tone. Wu
employs the printing technique for the packing boxes of betel nuts to turn his ladies into green or blue (Hsieh 62). Meanwhile, the frames of the pictures and paintings are carefully
decorated by Wu. He uses the plastic flowers and patterned leather to frame his works. It is the idea he gains from Taiwanese funerals. Fake materials for the decorations in Taiwanese funerals are cheaper than the real ones and easy for preservation. Also, the garish and colorful characters they have will not let the family lose their face since traditionally it is believed that the more flourishing a ceremony is, the more blissful a family will be. It is a style which contributes to the Taiwanese disposable culture.
In addition, Wu’s choice about the method and style of his works unfolds another implication—the theme of life and death. Barthes finally “found” his mother among lots of
In addition, Wu’s choice about the method and style of his works unfolds another implication—the theme of life and death. Barthes finally “found” his mother among lots of