As the English word for fine ceramics,
“china,” implies, China has the most highly
esteemed ceramics tradition in the world. Stunning
three-color tomb figures, elegant sea-green celadon
wares, and gorgeous decorated porcelains grace all
the finest museums in the world. Nearly every genre
of historical Chinese ceramic art is avidly collected,
and today, determined, newly rich Chinese connoisseurs
are vying with their counterparts in Europe and America
to bring home any outstanding pieces that appear on
the market.
In the arena of contemporary art ceramics, however,
Chinese artists have had only a negligible impact
during the decades since the founding of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949. Soon after gaining power,
the Chinese Communist Party put into practice Mao
Zedong’s maxim that “Art Should Serve
The People,” and artists of all kinds were coerced
into making art that primarily stressed the egalitarian
ideals of a Socialist society. The old-style ceramic
studios were amalgamated and reorganized into handiwork
factories, where everyone was required to share all
skills, no matter how specialized or “secret.”
Production of fine ceramics was limited to a small
number of traditional artisans making pieces mainly
for use as gifts to foreign dignitaries. Then, beginning
in the 1960s, intellectuals and skilled workers of
all kinds were persecuted as part of Mao’s Great
Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), as production of
ceramics with any kind of elitist associations was
banned and existing examples, including precious antiques,
were destroyed in huge numbers.
In the midst of this chaos and its aftermath, Chinese
ceramists remained completely unaware of the development
of studio and fine art ceramics in the rest of the
world. For decades, Chinese ceramics received no impact
at all from the many new types of focused and expressive
explorations of form, action, and material that were
being carried out by ceramic artists in places as
diverse as Japan, America, and Europe. Incredibly,
it was not until the early 1990s that even the concept
that a single artist should personally execute the
entire creative process of a ceramic work became known
in China. Up until that point, production of ceramics
had always been seen as a cooperative effort requiring
the coordination of multiple skilled artisans. It
was this environment in which the ceramist Zhu Legeng
came of age.
Early Adversity, Early Success
Zhu Legeng (pronounced “Joo Lehgung”)
was born in Jingdezhen, China in 1952, just three
years after Mao Zedong established the People’s
Republic of China. Zhu’s father was a prominent
ceramics artist, carrying on the noble tradition of
Chinese decorated porcelain that had begun in the
fourteenth century. While still a teen, Zhu was forced
to watch as his father, an educated and cultured man,
was repeatedly denounced and attacked by Red Guards
and their partisans during the Cultural Revolution.
The prolonged stress that resulted from the attacks
eventually resulted in premature death for Zhu’s
father. During the same period, formal education was
seriously disrupted, with the result that Zhu, like
many of his generation, fell years behind in school.
Despite the pain of seeing his father harassed because
of his profession, at an early age Zhu felt himself
captured by the porcelain medium. Even as the Cultural
Revolution continued, he began working as an assistant
in the research institute of Jingdezhen’s Ceramic
Art Factory, where skilled artisans worked together
to preserve the techniques of China’s past.
In 1979, while a student at Beijing’s Central
Academy of Arts and Crafts, Zhu was selected to assist
the artist Zhang Danian in constructing of a huge
ceramic mural, “Song of the Forest” to
be installed at Beijing International Airport. In
1982, his own work, “Happy Lady,” won
first prize in the citywide competition in his hometown
of Jingdezhen, China’s porcelain capital.
As a Master of Fine Arts student between 1985 and
1988, Zhu traveled around China, studying his country’s
diverse artistic heritages. Soon after his graduation,
he was hired to the faculty of the Jingdezhen Ceramics
Institute, and his work “Scenes of the Miao
People,” inspired by a minority culture of southwestern
China, won first prize in the national arts and crafts
competition.
Artistic Progression
In his early years, Zhu focused on surface decoration
in painted overglaze pigments, with less attention
paid to form and glaze. In 1991, however, the First
China International Ceramic Art Conference was held
in Beijing. That conference gave Chinese artists their
first significant exposure to international art ceramics.
The works presented at the conference inspired Zhu
to break away from traditional modes and use the ceramic
medium to explore abstract ideas, creative forms,
and innovative approaches. He set up his own workshop,
studio, and kiln, becoming one of the first Chinese
ceramists to do so in the post-Mao era.
Zhu continued to win major prizes at China ceramics
competitions, and in 1997, a solo exhibition of his
work was held at the National Art Museum of China
(NAMOC). The following year, he was promoted to full
professor, and his reputation as a major force in
Chinese ceramics was firmly established.
Going International
At a time when contemporary Chinese art ceramics were
all but unknown on the international scene, Zhu determined
that making an impact outside of China was an essential
step toward reviving China’s status as a producer
of fine and innovative ceramic art. In 1999, he participated
in the Eighth World Conference on Ceramic Art in Amsterdam,
and in the Korean Three Country Art Exhibition of
contemporary art from India, China and Korea. In the
year 2000, Zhu was granted a government subsidy to
support his work and in 2001, he participated in the
first World Ceramics Biennale in Icheon, Korea. In
2002, he completed a series of ceramic mural installations
at the Milal Museum of Art’s fine arts complex
in Seoul, which included a cutting-edge ceramic installation
that covered the walls of the complex’s state-of-the-art
concert hall. Working closely with a professional
sound engineer, Zhu created an installation that not
only was visually interesting, but actually improved
the hall’s sound quality. In the years since
its opening, the concert hall has become known as
the “Porcelain Music Hall,” and has grown
in fame throughout Korea and abroad.
After transferring to the China Academy of Art in
2003, Zhu worked as curator for exhibitions of contemporary
ceramic art. In 2004, he was responsible for selecting
works for the First East Asian Ceramic Art Exhibition
in Beijing and compiled the works of invited artists
for the catalogue. The following year, the National
Art Museum of China hosted Zhu’s second exhibition,
and in 2007, he gave his first exhibition at the Shanghai
Art Museum, one of the world’s great new museums.
Creating Connections
Through his works, Zhu Legeng seeks to create connections
with his audience on various levels. Although many
of his forms are recognizable, they are not simply
representative or utilitarian. In the afterword to
his 2007 Shanghai Museum exhibition catalogue, Zhu
states that he tries to explore universal concepts
through his ceramic pieces. Though they often appear
to be born of fantasy, Zhu asserts that his intent
is to explore human attributes such as spirituality
and emotion, as well as our relationship to our environment,
our ancestral forebears, and the universe in which
we live. Zhu does not make his connections explicit;
rather, he tries to create subtle sensations that
lead viewers on their own journey. He does this partly
by using his materials – clay, glaze, pigment,
and the effect of the kiln’s heat – to
create expressionistic forms that challenge the viewer
to travel beyond the ordinary and straightforward.
Among Zhu’s recent large-scale works is a series
of water buffalo patterned after animals who have
worked the fields in his homeland of south China for
centuries. In Chinese culture, the water buffalo,
or ox, is admired for its strength, steadfastness,
and stoic acceptance of hard work. Through his installations
of herds of ox figures, Zhu not only praises the attributes
of the ox, but also mourns the passing of an age when
human beings and animals lived in much greater harmony
than they do now.
For some years, Zhu has been creating a series known
as Tian Ma – “Heavenly Horses.”
Some of his horses are relatively large scale; others
are simply tiny additions to other forms like teapots.
All of them, however, are designed to express the
horse’s free spirit, rather than its literal
form. Among Zhu’s most compelling works that
incorporate horses are long, flat ceramic forms that
feature one or two diminutive equine figures at one
end. The rich celadon glaze enveloping these works
stimulates the viewer’s imagination to create
an environmental context for the work. “Are
the horses by a river, on a frozen lake, or are they
horses in the clouds of heaven?” Zhu asks. It
is up to the viewer to decide – or not decide.
The use of a light blue celadon glaze on white porcelain
is a technique that began with the Song dynasty yingqing
(shadow blue) wares of Zhu’s hometown of Jingdezhen
nearly a thousand years ago. Zhu’s Heavenly
Horses capture that ineffable quality of the yingqing
glaze – pale and translucent where thin, thick
and lustrous where it pools or drips.
Several years ago, the Kentucky Horse Park hosted
an exhibition of fabulous historical horse-related
works from China. The Heavenly Horses created by Zhu
prove that the beauty, nobility and free spirit of
the horse continue to inspire Chinese artists today.
Expanding Horizons
Zhu Legeng’s busy schedule of museum exhibitions,
creations of installations, teaching, and student
supervision (he is both Director of the Ceramic Art
Center at the China Academy of Art and a doctoral
advisor) has left him little time to pursue independent
exhibitions in the United States or Europe. It is
therefore a tremendous honor to hold his first-ever
U.S. exhibition in Lexington. This is no doubt only
the first of many exhibitions of Zhu’s work
that will be held in this country, joining a growing
list of international venues. In addition, Zhu’s
rising reputation as a creator o f ceramic installations
– what he calls “environmental ceramics”
– will certainly increase his fame worldwide
as the number of his large-scale constructions increases.
The most innovative Chinese ceramics of the future
will probably look nothing like the Chinese ceramics
of the past, but Zhu Legeng is committed to exploring
ways to ensure that the new Chinese ceramics lack
none of the creativity, beauty, or relevance of their
historical forebears.
