第一次见尚扬是在1996 年。当时正为古根海姆博物馆策划中国艺术展，去广州华南师范大学他的画室看作品。90 年代的广州处处能感受到中国经济高速成长初期的兴奋和躁动，但一进尚扬的画室, 面对靠列在墙上的《大风景》系列, 却立即有一种超脱和纯粹感，感受到一层深沉的思考。《大风景》画面上，传统的风景元素在解构后以排列、拼贴的方式加以重组，繁硕的细节隐匿在巨大的影般的几何块面中造成一种强烈的、排他性的视觉震撼。画面上抽象提炼后的图式、线条和简洁的色彩构成一种史前地貌般的原始自然形态，似乎有意识地在拉开与现实自然间的时间距离，但画面上飘浮着的一些符号性的现代建筑、日用物体、医生的白大褂、X 光片，似乎又在不断地提醒你这正是我们生存相处的周遭环境。一些火山状山脉似乎欲喷又止，爆发前的沉寂展现的是一种深思，一种对生存环境的危机感，一种文化的危机感。尚扬的作品显然并不是一般意义上的风景，不是自然再现的被动体，而是以风景元素为依托而参与诠释和试图改造现实的一种

　　主动的文化行为。

　　其实中国的山水画在宋代全面登场取代人物画作为最重要的绘画门类时就与当时社会政治、文化的变动直接联系在一起。宋代山水画这一新兴门类的兴起正是文人士大夫这一新兴社会精英阶层用他们的眼光来看待世界的直接产物，将艺术转变为反映社会变动的媒介。因为山水不是人为的，是自然赋予的，这就提供了一个场所，使得受过教育但没有世袭背景的文人不必面对社会世袭等级，直接在其个人和周遭环境间进行社会伦理的交流和对话。因此宋代的山水画是立足于美学意义上的，也就是侧重于伦理道德上的，而不是装饰性的。它是文化权力的工具和手段，创造历史和经济的行为。

　　尚扬近年的系列风景是在寻求以更合适的视觉形式来传达对社会和文化问题的关注。尚扬说他常常长时间不画画，而坐着思考，对社会、文化、自然、生存环境的思考。他的画也更趋于深沉。非典时期创作的《董其昌计划》很好地传达了他对这些问题思考的过程，并转化为一种阐释和参与的主动文化行为。对于董其昌的艺术，历来着重于他集历代大家之成而自成一家并树立文人山水画的规范图式。但是董其昌的画之所以能最终自成一家而形成独特的山水图式，很重要的是对前人的图式加以解构，加以纯粹化，并输入强烈的抽象元素进行重组，使得自然的山石回归到其最基本的形体，以致他的画在现在看来都十分具有现代感。尚扬的《董其昌计划》在我看来正是对现代社会的人们在面对非典带来最基本的生存危机时回归求生本能的现象的思考，对现代人们生存环境的担忧，以及对解决生存环境危机的某种提示，展现了一种主动的文化参与。

　　在这里我们可以运用米歇尔(W. J. T. Mitchell)的观点，即在讨论风景时，我们要把它看作一个动词，而不是名词。也就是我们不把尚扬的风景画仅

　　看作一件可看或可读的物体，而是将其看作一个社会或主观认定形成的过程。现在我们所关心的不仅仅是他的风景是什么或意味着什么，而且包括了它做什么，它是如何作为一种文化行为来“作用”的。风景作为一种文化媒介具有类似意识形态的双重角色。它将文化和社会的建构自然化，表现了一个不可避免的既存的人为化的世界，同时又使这一种表现具有操作性，通过具体的景致或画面来阐释人为的关系。因此，它总是在一个空间或氛围中迎接和拥抱我们，而我们又在其中找到或失去我们自己。

　　在尚扬的画中我们看到，风景是一个动态的媒介，在其中我们存在和活动，但其自身也处于时空的转换之中。作为一种变化中的媒介，风景是视觉转换的场所，也是文化权力和身份形成和确定的焦点。

　　THE LANDSCAPE PAINTING OF SHANG YANG

　　Professor of East Asian Art History, University of California, San Diego

　　Shen Kuiyi

　　The first time I met Shang Yang was in 1996. I went to his studio located at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou to select some artworks for the Chinese Art Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, which I was planning and organizing. Guangzhou of the 90's was a city immersed in the excitement and impulsive passions stimulated by the growing economy. However, in the moment I viewed his Great Landscape series, I fell into a meditative state while becoming profoundly detached from mundane life. On the canvas traditional landscapes were deconstructed into elements reorganized by the artist – the intricacy of details dimly visible in the giant silhouette-like geometric structures generating an effect of violence and exclusiveness that shocked the visual senses. Primitive natural patterns composed of extracted shapes, lines and monotonous tones expanded the nature of temporal distance while drifting symbols of modern architecture, daily objects, doctor's uniforms, and X-rays questioned the environmental surrounds of our lives. The stillness before eruption presented in the volcano-like mountains expressed an awareness of the collapse of our living environment and culture. Shang Yang's landscapes were not a copy of the real natural existence; he involved these elements into the cultural illustration and reformation of our reality.

　　The official replacement of portraiture with landscape as the major painting form in the Song dynasty was directly linked to the political and cultural transformation of the time. The emerging social class consisted of the intellectuals who had required an arena where they could develop ethical dialogues with their surroundings, thereby avoiding oppression from the social hierarchy. The landscape was just the form they needed as it was not man-made, but provided by Nature. Song dynasty painting could be based on aesthetics and ethics, not decoration, and used as a means to pursue and create a new culture, history and economy.

　　The recent landscape series of Shang Yang is attempting to find a more suitable visual form to convey his concern of social and cultural issues. Rather than painting, Shang Yang has said he tends to spend more time probing the issues of society, culture, nature, and our living environment, which explains the profundity of his work. A good example is the "Dong Qichang Project" series, created in 2003 at the same time the whole nation was unexpectedly struck by SARS. In this series, the artist has endowed the landscape with an active cultural behavior that fervently participates in social interpretation. Dong Qichang, of the Ming dynasty, had established the rules and principles of painting forms for the later literati landscape paintings. He deconstructed the heritages absorbed from histor ical achievements and re-organized the pieces by adding abstract elements. The mountains and stones of his paintings had regained their fundamental shapes and structures, resulting in a sense of modernity even from today's viewpoint. The "Dong Qichang Project", for me, has reflected Shang Yang's meditation on the arising instinct of survival for a modern people when life was threatened by the SARS epidemic; his concern of the degeneration of our living environment; and his appeal to address the crisis.

　　To paraphrase W.J.T. Mitchell's viewpoint: we should consider the landscape as a verb, not a noun, and as such Shang Yang's paintings stand not as a process of visual enjoyment, but as a construction of his society. The meaning of his landscapes functions as a reflection on a cultural behavior that demands our attention. Landscapes as a cultural media have naturalized the constructions of culture and society, presenting a world inevitably affected by human behaviors, while retaining the ability to illustrate human interventions. Shang Yang's landscape always welcomes and embraces us in a certain space or atmosphere, even if in response we sometimes feel lost, or otherwise removed from it.

　　In Shang Yang's painting, the landscape is applied as a media of mobility. Despite our existence and movement within it, his landscape is itself involved in a spatial and temporal transformation. It is not only a space for visual transmission, but also a juncture for the process of conforming cultural rights and identities.