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Miao Xiaochun and His H2O
Wu Hung
Miao Xiaochun’s newest art project, H2O- A Study of Art History, contemplates on the continuity and metamorphoses of life and art. Philosophically it responds to a question he posed in his previous project, The Last Judgment in Cyberspace.[1] As indicated by the title of a video in that project, the question is “Where will we go?” after human history. Using the technique of computer animation, the video features a person---a digital reconstruction of the artist himself---traversing the vast cosmic space inside Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Like a lost shooting star, he emerges from the depths of cyberspace and transforms into an infinite number of identical figures, both the divinities and the mortal beings who once lived. In Christian eschatology, on the day of the Last Judgment, every man and woman will present him or herself before Jesus Christ to have their conduct reviewed by their Lord. The meritorious ones will ascend to Heaven; the sinful ones will descend to Hell. But in Miao Xiaochun’s computer animation, all the figures finally disperse, vanishing into the shapeless space from which they originally came. Their origins are beyond our knowledge and their future destinations are totally unknown. The video thus does not offer an answer to the question “Where will we go?” ---but only raises it. On the other hand, by erasing any difference between Heaven and Hell and making all divine and human images identical, the artist effectively rejects the traditional Christian solution. Constancy and continuity, not differentiation and hierarchy, underlie the narrative structure and visual presentation of the computer animation. In this way, this work bridges The Last Judgment in Cyberspace and H2O-A Study of Art History, because constancy and continuity now appear as the explicit theme of the later project. This also explains why Miao Xiaochun focuses on H2O , a natural element which he believes best embodies these two concepts. He explains this idea in a “self-statement” about this project:
I really don’t know where I was from or where I will go, but I know many substances go into and out of my body every day, among which is water-H2O. Before entering my body, it has gone through numerous living things: plants, animals, and human beings; and it will again go through numerous plants, animals and human beings after being released from my body. I am just one of the containers holding it temporarily, or one of the points it flows by. Water has been recycling through oceans, the sky, and the land. The process has begun ever since remote ages, continues to the present, and will continue into future, never stopping, repeating forever in an endless way. Does it carry and deliver certain information about the source and destination of life? All forms of life and water vitally interrelate with each other. Do they thus show compassion and concern for each other? Is it [not clear what “it” refers to] constantly changing life, which is delicate and subtle like water, recycling endlessly as water does? Will life that has vanished condense again at some other place and return to earth, just like evaporated drops of water condensing into rain, snow, or frost?[2]
The project does not attempt to document the natural transmission and transformation of water, however. Rather, Miao Xiaochun has selected a group of famous paintings as his “materials” for re-presentation. The rationale is that these images created by some of the greatest painters in art history, rather than natural phenomena in the objective world, more profoundly reveal the essential roles that water plays in human life. Just as in his creation of The Last Judgment in Cyberspace, Miao Xiaochun has replaced all the figures in these paintings with a single 3-D digital image of himself. But unlike The Last Judgment in Cyberspace, the meaning of this image has changed from unifying individual characters in a single work to connecting various historical paintings into “a kind of metabolism” (Miao Xiaochun’s words[3]). In his view, if water flows from one organism to another in the natural world, then this project makes him (or his image) a neutral element “flowing” through works of art created in different times---a process which generates new works based on old themes.
Regenerating or Destroying Life
H2O-A Study of Art History thus has a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, this body of works, including a series of digital photographs and a computer animation, can be comprehended as an elaborate metaphor for the organic process of life, in which water is indispensable. On the other hand, these images re-present existing images based on “a study of art history,” and can be considered “meta-images”---“representations of representations” that articulate the artist’s critical reflection on art making. It should be pointed out that although Miao Xiaochun formerly studied art history in Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts---he actually obtained a Master’s degree from the Department of Art History in that school---his selection of the European masterpieces for H2O is not based on a standard art historical approach. Rather, he is guided by an artist’s instinct---in his words, the idea of water in these works “touches him to the heart.”[4] Not all these works feature water explicitly, however; one should therefore explore hidden factors that have contributed to his selection of them. An analysis of the selected examples and his re-representations reveals that he is “touched” by at least three kinds of symbolism of the water in these works.
First, two photographs based on Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Fountain of Youth (1546) and Michelangelo’s The Deluge (1508-1509) vividly exemplify water’s power in regenerating or destroying human life. Many ancient cultures developed the idea of “magical water;” bathing or imbibing in it would confer immortality or bring youth back to the elderly. Alexander the Great therefore traveled to the world's end to search for the Fountain of Life. Even as late as the early 16th century, the governor of Puerto Rico, Ponce de Leon, set off with three ships to find a similar fountain in the land of Bimini, but discovered Florida instead. Cranach’s work stemmed from the same fantasy: in the painting, old women who had entered a "fountain of youth" now emerge on the other side as young girls again. Miao Xiaochun tries to reinforce the sense of a magical happening in his photograph: the water in the fountain embraces the bathers with energetic waves, and the changing color of the human figures discloses the progress of their transformation.
But water is not always benign toward human beings; it is also famous for its destructive ability to take life away. There have been many stories and images describing the Deluge---a terrible flood which almost destroyed the human race completely. The flood story told in Genesis---the source of Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel---is frequently depicted in western art. But accounts of similar apocalyptic events also existed in many other ancient traditions, such as the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh and the legend of the devastating flood that took place before the first Chinese dynasty Xia. Although Noah’s story tells that God sent down the Deluge to punish the wicked and evil-doers, Michelangelo’s painting focuses on innocent women and children, who are terrified by the calamity and struggle to escape it. Miao Xiaochun’s version further dismisses any difference in gender, age, and conduct; all figures now constitute an anonymous race threatened by extinction. He has also enlarged the proportion of water---in fact, because the figures’ individuality is no longer the subject of representation, the powerful, ocean-like flood has become the focal character of the composition.
