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转载｜“乱书”在剑桥：王冬龄个展

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以下文章来源于巽汇，作者王冬龄

编者按：2023年5月25日，王冬龄的个展《仰望星空》在剑桥大学香美术馆（Heong Gallery）开幕。以下为中国美术学院院长高世名教授、策展人容思玉，以及霍金的女儿露西·霍金为展览撰写的文章。

转载｜“乱书”在剑桥：王冬龄个展博文精选墨斋崇真艺客

王冬龄：仰望星空

展览日期

2023年5月25日-8月27日

策展人

容思玉（Holly Roussell）

展览地点

英国剑桥大学唐宁学院香美术馆（The Heong Gallery）

乱书

秩序与混沌的辩证

高世名/文

1845年，巴尔扎克写过一部短篇小说，叫《无名的杰作》。小说中讲到，年轻艺术家普桑去拜访一位老大师，他得知大师十年来一直在秘密创作一幅终极的完美杰作，却秘不示人。当普桑费尽心机终于见到这件作品的时候，他惊讶地发现，画布上只是一片混乱与虚无。这位大师在十年间沉湎于自己完美的想象，画布上却一片狼籍，一无所是。这篇小说是一个难以索解的寓言，我从中读出的不是对完美主义的反讽，也不仅是悲怆的崇高，而是一种本质性的隐喻。巴尔扎特小说中的老大师从一片混乱的线条和颜料中，看到了他的缪斯，这完全是现代绘画的一个隐喻——真正的缪斯并非存在于绘画的对象或主题，而是存在于绘画的媒介性本身。老大师的心灵投射和自我想象近乎疯狂，但那隐藏在工作室深处的混沌一片、不可辨认的画布，却是艺术工作的终极秘密——那是来自乌有乡的消息，是存在的雪泥鸿爪，是不可见之域的示现。

王冬龄先生的“乱书”可以视作巴尔扎克这一隐喻的中国式回响，在其中，我们感知到的是秩序与混沌、无际与无常、万端与无端的辩证之迹象。

众所周知，中国书法与汉字之间的粘连度极为紧密，这导致了书法这一独特文化和艺术形式的产生。如同巴克森德尔所说：“书法是联通文字和视觉两个文化系统的桥梁”。书法之“象”根植于文字之“形”。书法需要辩识和阅读，尽管它同时也是“象”，是视觉品鉴和凝视观赏的对象。书法是二维平面上的三维运动，同时又是时间中笔笔生发的演历，所以也可以说书法是四维的，若再加上声与义，书法就是名符其实的“高维创作”，在迹与象、意与态之间相互激荡。

视觉与语言彼此激荡，文字与书写相互焕发，这是中国文化最为独特动人之处。作为书写的书法，是在时间中逐步显现、释放、生长出来的，书写者于日积月累的书写中熟极而流，惟流动而变化生焉，惟变化而快意生焉。书到快意酣畅之际，信笔游疆，无理而生趣，笔笔生发，恍惚以成象；诸般形容迹象随机而生，不可预计，亦不可复现。

乱即是混沌，与秩序相对。古希腊人的宇宙或世界（cosmos）首先是有秩序的，没有秩序就无所谓世界。而在以老子《道德经》为代表的中国古典智慧里，有和无、混沌与秩序是相伴相生、相辅相成的辩证之两端。“乱者，治也”，这是反训之义。乱书，书乱，是对书法中“法”之秩序的扰乱与抗争，乱书由此开辟出一个自由开放的混沌空间：乱书非字，脱离了文字，书写的意义变得不可读解，书写的状态成为核心；乱书非书，脱离了书之法（方法与法度），书写成为单纯的行动，书写的动作成为核心；乱书非象，脱离了一切可以依托的物象和所有可以把握的意象，书写成为单纯的墨迹、痕迹与踪迹，书写的身体性和情意姿态成为一切的核心。“乱书”中凝结的是行动，动而暂停，则动状犹在，动意犹存。此行动之状态，正在意兴飞扬之际的舞之蹈之——书乱之要，在于写得沉醉，写得气象淋漓，写得销魂荡魄。在这混沌与秩序辩证生发的书写状态中，书家浑然忘我却又自在自得。

老子《道德经》云：“恍兮惚兮，其中有象；惚兮恍兮，其中有物”。在我的理解中，王冬龄先生的乱书，其终极目标是归零。在破除了字、书、象这三重挂碍之后，乱书通向一种演历，一种原始性的mimesis，以乱书、书乱去模拟、演历仓颉造字之际的变幻万端和一片混茫。

从归一而至于归零，由万端而至于无端，自莫名而臻于无名——“乱书”之道，通往无名之象，有迹而无形，这正相应于伟大的剑桥物理学家霍金所描述的宇宙大爆炸之际的鸿蒙景象。

Chaos Script: The Dialectic Between Order and Chaos

Gao Shiming

In 1845, Honoré de Balzac wrote a short story entitled ‘Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu’ (‘The Unknown Masterpiece’). In the story, a young Nicolas Poussin visited a master painter, where he learned that the master had been working in secret for more than a decade to create the perfect masterpiece. When Poussin finally saw the work, he was surprised to discover nothing but confusion on the canvas. This master had been immersed in his perfect vision for a decade, but only disorder appeared in the painting. This short story is an allegory that is at times difficult to explain, but I see it as neither satirising perfectionism nor evocative of the tragic sublime. Instead, it is a fundamental metaphor. The old master in Balzac’s story sees his muse in a chaos of line and colour, and in this perfect metaphor for modern painting, the true muse is the medium of painting itself, rather than the subject or theme of his paintings. The painter’s desire to depict his soul and vision of himself bordered on madness, but that chaos hiding in the depths of a studio or an unidentifiable canvas are the ultimate secret of artistic work—these signals that come out of nowhere are traces of past existences and the manifestations of invisible realms.

Wang Dongling’s ‘chaos script’ (luanshu) could be considered a Chinese echo of Balzac’s metaphor. In his work, we perceive signs of the dialectic between order and chaos, boundlessness and impermanence, multi-polarity and apolarity.

The closeness of Chinese calligraphy and Chinese characters led to the development of calligraphy as a unique cultural and artistic form. Michael Baxandall once said that calligraphy is a bridge connecting the two cultural systems of the textual and the visual. The imagery of calligraphy is rooted in the forms of characters. Calligraphy needs to be identified and read, even though it is also an image, the object of visual appreciation and enjoyment. Calligraphy is three-dimensional movement on a two-dimensional plane, but because the brushstrokes follow one after another in time, calligraphy could be considered four-dimensional. If we also add sound and meaning, then calligraphy is truly a higher-dimension mode of creation, shifting between mark and image, significance and manner.

The visual and the linguistic inspire one another, and text and writing shine more brightly in each other’s company—these traits are the most distinctive and moving features of Chinese culture. As writing, calligraphy gradually appears, frees itself, and grows over time, and writers become fluid and expert through hours of writing. Only this fluidity can produce change, and only change can produce pleasure. When writing to the point of pleasure, the writer may let his brush roam free. He finds irrationality and joy in every stroke as he forms an elusive image. Descriptive marks arise spontaneously, unforeseen and irreplicable.

Chaos stands relative to order. In the ancient Greek cosmos, order came first, and without order there was no cosmos. In classical Chinese philosophy, represented by Laozi’s Dao De Jing, presence and absence, chaos and order are the two poles in a nurturing, complementary dialectic. ‘He who causes disorder will maintain order’ is a classic example of this dynamic. Chaos script (luanshu) and writing chaos (shuluan) is the resistance to and dismantling of the orderly canon of calligraphy. Chaos script opens a free yet unruly space: Chaos script has no characters, and when divorced from text, writing becomes indecipherable, and the condition of writing becomes central. Chaos script has no writing, and when divorced from the canon (laws and methods), writing becomes pure action, and the act of writing becomes central. Chaos script has no imagery, standing apart from all supportingimagery and all graspable concepts. Writing becomes simple ink, markings, and traces, and the physicality and emotional tenor of the writing becomes the centre of everything. Wang’s chaos script crystallises action. When that action stops, the state and meaning of that movement linger. This state of action is a dance that arises when the mood strikes. The impulse to write chaos stems from writing in an uninhibited state of disorientation and overwhelm. In the state of writing generated by the dialectic between chaos and order, a calligrapher loses himself yet finds contentment.

In the Dao De Jing, Laozi wrote, ‘In dark half-lit, a likening; / In light half-dark, forms visible.’ As I understand it, the ultimate goal of Wang’s chaos script is returning to zero. After removing the obstacles of word, writing, and imagery, chaos script leads to an evolution and a kind of primitive mimesis. With chaos script and writing chaos, he mimics and develops the mutability and ambiguity that Cangjie created when he invented Chinese characters.

From one to zero, from multi-polar to apolar, from the indescribable to the nameless—the way of chaos script moves toward a nameless imagery or toward marks without forms that seem to respond to the primordial chaos of the Big Bang that the great Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking described.

References

Laozi. Dao De Jing. Translated by Moss Roberts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

5月25日下午王冬龄在剑桥唐寜学院作《我，书法》讲座，右为策展人容思玉

超验的线条：王冬龄宇宙中的秩序与混沌

容思玉/文

王冬龄的艺术，承载的是一种具有奇妙力量、并且试图对世界做出改变的个人表达。六十多年来，他每天都把自己的思想、毛笔和精神统一起来进行练习。

两千多年来，书法被认为是构成中国文人基本修养的“四艺”之一，头脑必须淫浸在传统中学习，而身体应该在书写的运动中训练，以正确地在纸面上呈现艺术家内心的愿景和感觉。每当墨水接触到纸张时，两者都无法回到它们的原始状态--它们已经被转化和统一。墨水并不停留在表面，而是在它们连接的瞬间进入页面的纤维中，就像通过语言或文字形成并释放到世界上的想法一样，墨水也会在第一次接触时渗透并永远改变其世界。

王冬龄常驻杭州，是中国艺术研究院现代书法研究中心的创始主任。他受过古典训练，1966年开始在南京师范学院美术系学习，他的学习因文革而中断。在文化大革命期间，他的艺术探索收到影响，书写"大字报"变成了日常。这在当时是一种常见的视觉传播形式，就是在大纸上书写口号，在公共场所展示。写大字报的经历与他对书法的兴趣形成了偶然的呼应，他于1967年开始向林散之大师求教。

1970年代末开始，中国经历了巨大的社会和政治变革，这为年轻艺术家带来了前所未有的新机会。艺术学院重新开放，独立的艺术团体和展览开始蓬勃发展，在邓小平的 "改革开放"政策下，国际交流的机会增加。这也带热了对艺术中的个人主义和实验的关注。全国各地的年轻艺术家试图打破前几十年在中国占主导地位的社会主义现实主义风格，并通过探索新观念、形式和媒体来推动艺术的极限。在此期间，王冬龄进入杭州的浙江美术学院书法篆刻研究生专业学习。毕业后，他的作品很快在全国范围内获得好评，1987年在北京的中国美术馆和中国美术学院举办了个展。同年，他创作了第一件实验性的大型草书作品，将创新的尺度和表演元素融入到他的书法中——现在他仍在继续探索。在这些展览之后不久，像他那一代的许多人一样，王冬龄第一次出国旅行。他在1989年访问了明尼苏达州，并在随后的几年里走访了美国、欧洲、日本和加拿大。在这些年里，他的书法被欧洲和美国最负盛名的机构收藏，包括大英博物馆和大都会艺术博物馆。

王冬龄被公认为世界上最伟大的在世书法家之一，他的篆书作品和大型草书作品尤其令人称道。这些作品通常被称为 "榜书"或 "巨幅书法"，它们将尺寸作为一种形式元素，使观众沉浸在书写的能量中。艺术家认为，他对规模实验的某些灵感来自于他的海外旅行--特别是在博物馆里观看西方当代艺术的新奇体验。与观众的互动的关注中生发出的灵感，使他在书法中对空间和尺度的开创性使用已经成为艺术家实践中的主要特征和手段，这使他的艺术尤其符合当代观众口味。在二十一世纪的全球化语境中，其特点是壮观的审美冲击和引人入胜的交流形式，在围绕和改变着我们的日常环境中，这种与大体量作品的接触似乎在某种程度上是一种艺术策略，其目的是消解艺术与日常之间的障碍。

"我自己（对书法现代化）的答案是让观众进入作品，让他们全心全意地感受作品，但也明确地知道它们是由书法家创造的。...我需要开辟自己的道路。这就是我对自己问题的回应：如何为今天的空间创作"。

王冬龄的大型书法作品通常是特定场地的，空间成为观众体验它们的框架，它巧妙地将参观者引入一个沉思的空间，同时传递出创作行为的强烈物理性。

近年来，王冬龄继续进行书法探索，并对这种艺术作出了罕见的贡献：创造出了一种新的书体。“乱书”与传统水墨中的文人价值观相呼应，但又将书法从根本上推到了历史的束缚之外，是一种更重视书写动作的姿态和感性的字体。乱书通常被翻译为 "混乱的文字 "或 "纠缠的文字"，其特点是更自由的表达，并能产生打破某些基本形式原则的文本——例如字符和网格所构建的传统“章法”概念。他是一种基于传统书法规则上的越轨行为，但其目的是为了更充分地体现其纯粹的本质。对那些不太熟悉这种风格的人来说，"乱书"的概念可能意味着作品完全是在自发的行动或表演中创作的。然而，这个过程也许更应该被理解为一种无拘无束的表达，一种行动过程。在这个过程中，艺术家体现了原创的精神--穿越时间或空间--在最初创作的那一刻重拾他们的本质，把这个瞬间归还到艺术家自己。这种风格的超越性、抽象性、动态性、曲线和线条是通过纯粹的流动而转变的思想。艺术家用“乱书”文字创作的巨幅作品也许是他思想发展最为深远的作品，因为，创作的过程、规模和理念都位于传统书法和当代观念艺术实践的前沿。

“乱书”的字源（etymology）既指向对某一特定功能实体的安排和管理，也是引入无序、打破规则和限制。etymology这个英文词暗示写作在某种程度上是杂乱无章的；在白话的用法中，这个词经常指打破规则，或被扔进无序或混乱中--事实上，它是一种精心编排的混乱。从根源上说，"乱 "的可以追述到古代青铜壶器的维护和排序。乌黑的笔触、点和线动态地引领我们的目光穿过宣纸的表面。王冬龄的动作被捕其中，但从来不是静止的；他们的活力已经渗透到纸的表面，与之融合，并改变了它。作品的主题成为动态的姿态和构图，文字成为画布上的审美形式，鼓励观众对作品进行更多的解释和感性知觉的参与。在某些方面，“乱书”代表了王冬龄将书法现代化，使之成为超越语言学和目的论限制的普遍艺术的持久追求的高峰。在这种风格下书写的字符通常难以辨认，但不是自我创造的。它们是大师一生密集练习、重复和实验的结果。通过这些练习，大师可以将形式从语言中解放出来，允许其发生变化。

策划这次展览的根本目的是为了将王冬龄的精神和表达进行具体化呈现。这个展览并不是要对他跨越了60年、涵盖了所有经典及创新书法形式的艺术生涯进行深入、全面的回顾。我们的目的是呈现王冬龄艺术精神的核心。这个为唐宁学院香画廊场地空间特别设计的展览，以道家大师老子和剑桥大学理论物理学家和宇宙学家斯蒂芬-霍金的著作节选为灵感，是一次有远见的思想交流。通过将这些文字并列在画廊内，《仰望星空》暗指一种共同的开创性能量，以及不同的知识传统和实践之间的和谐交往，这都是贯穿艺术家职业生涯的灵感源泉。霍金和老子的话语在空间中相互对峙，仿佛在直接对话。这种布置仿佛是在发出一种邀请，让观众体会到西方和东方的理论和传统在王冬龄作品的呈现中是如何共同存在；同时，这也是一种刻意的姿态，旨在解开对中国当代艺术的解读中长期存在的东方/西方二元对立。在这种对话中，重新发现霍金和老子，既体现了王冬龄艺术的普遍审美经验，同时也使人们注意到这些先锋人物的作品的象征意义。在王冬龄的‘乱书’里，这些文本的呈现方式变得抽象、难以阅读，从而超越了它们的原始含义。然而，在这些书法线条中体现的是对文字、宇宙、以及变革力量的深刻认识。这些艺术作品代表了跨越时代的先锋知识探索和思想的持久影响。

Transcendental Lines : Order and Chaos in Wang Dongling’s Universe

Holly Roussell

The art of Wang Dongling embodies the alchemic potential of individual expression to transform the world. Each day, for more than sixty years, he has unified his mind, brush, and spirit to practice. In calligraphy, considered for over two millennia, one of the four arts, siyi, that form the essential learning of Chinese intellectuals, the mind must study, learn, and inhabit the rules of the tradition, while the body should train in the movement of writing to properly render on the page the vision, and the feeling, inside the artist. Each time ink touches paper, neither can ever return to their original states– they have been transformed and bound. Ink does not rest on the surface, it enters into the fibres of the page the instant they connect, like ideas formed and released into the world through speech or the written word, ink too will penetrate and alter forever its universe upon first contact.

Based in Hangzhou, Wang Dongling is the founding director of the Modern Calligraphy Research Centre at the China National Academy of Arts. Classically trained, he began studying at the Fine Arts Department of Nanjing Normal College in 1966, where his studies were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, he was required to change his artistic approach. For more than a decade, Wang would write government slogans for “big character posters” or dazibao, a common form of visual communication involving large sheets of paper inscribed with handwritten characters or slogans to be displayed in public places. His interest in calligraphy kindled by his experience writing dazibao, Wang sought training under master Lin Sanzhi in 1967.

Starting in the late 1970s, China underwent tremendous social and political changes which brought new and unprecedented opportunities for young artists. Art academies were reopened, independent art groups and exhibitions began to flourish, and, under the new “open-door policy” spearheaded by Deng Xiaoping, there was increased potential for international exchange. This surge of activity was characterised by a focus on individualism and experimentation in the arts. Young artists across the country sought to break with the strict Socialist-Realist style that had been dominant in China during the preceding decades, and to push the limits of art by exploring new potential concepts, forms, and media. During this period, Wang Dongling joined the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in the calligraphy seal carving research class. After graduation, his work quickly found national acclaim, with solo shows at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing and at the ChinaNational Academy of Art in 1987. This same year, he created his first experimental large-format cursive work, integrating innovative scale and performative elements into his calligraphy, which he continues to explore in the present. Shortly after these shows, like many of his generation, Wang Dongling travelled abroad for the first time. He visited Minnesota in 1989 and would travel over the following years around the United States, Europe, Japan, and to Canada. During these years, his calligraphy would enter the most prestigious collections in Europe and the United States, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Widely recognised as one of the world’s greatest living practitioners of calligraphy, Wang Dongling is particularly celebrated for his seal script compositions, and large-format cursive script works. Often referred to as “big paintings” or “monumental works”, these pieces use size as a formal element to immerse the viewer in the energy of the writing. The artist attributes certain inspiration to experiment with scale is drawn from his travels abroad – notably the novel experience of viewing Western contemporary art in museums. Growing out from an attentiveness to interaction with the viewer, Wang’s pioneering use of space and scale in calligraphy has become a longstanding characteristic and means within the artist’s practice to adapt his art for contemporary audiences. In this twenty-first-century global civilization, characterized by spectacular aesthetic potential and seductive forms of communication that surround and transform our environments on a daily basis, such engagement with scale seems to be, in part, an associative artistic strategy to increase the works’ accessibility.

“My own answer (to modernizing calligraphy) is to allow the viewers to enter the works, to enable them to feel wholeheartedly the works, but also know unequivocally they are created by the calligrapher. …I need to blaze my own trail. This is how I would answer that question I asked myself: how to create for today's space.”

Wang Dongling’s large-format calligraphy works are often site-specific, the space becoming the frame through which the audience experiences them, skillfully drawing the visitor into a contemplative space while simultaneously transmitting the intense physicality of the act of creation.

In recent years, Wang Dongling has continued to revitalise the genre, achieving a rare contribution to the history of the art: proposing a new script to the canon. Resonating withliterati values in traditional ink, but pushing calligraphy radically beyond its historical strictures, luanshu (乱书) is a script which places greater importance on the gestural and sensual qualities of the action of writing. Often translated as “chaos script”, or “entangled writing”, the technique is characterised by freer expression, and can produce a text that breaks from certain foundational formal principles - such as the historically proper compositions of characters, and the traditional role of the grid. His is a transgression grounded in traditional calligraphy, but which aims to manifest more fully its pure essence. The concept of luanshu may suggest to those less familiar with the style that works are created solely in a spontaneous action or performance. However, the process is perhaps better understood as an unrestrained interpretation, a process-action in which the artist embodies the spirit of the original writer – traversing time or space – to reinhabit their essence at the moment of initial creation, appropriating this instant as the artist’s own. The transcendent, abstract, dynamic, curves and lines of this style are ideas transfigured through pure flow. The artist’s monumental works in the luanshu script are perhaps those that develop the furthest his ideas, as process, scale, and philosophy of creation are situated at the frontier of traditional calligraphy and contemporary conceptual art practice.

The etymology of the characters of luanshu refers at once the arrangement and governance of a given functional entity, and the introduction of disorder, the breaking of rules and restrictions. The English language versions of the term may suggest the writing is in some way haphazard; in vernacular usage, the word often refers to breaking of rules, or a throwing into disorder, or chaos – it is, in fact, a masterfully choreographed chaos. At its root, the etymology of luan 乱 refers to the maintenance and ordering of ancient bronze Hu vessels. Ebony strokes, dots and lines sweep dynamically to lead our eyes across the surface of the xuan paper. The movement of Wang Dongling’s actions are captured, but never stilled; their vitality has penetrated the surface of the paper, fusing with it, and altering it. The subject of the works becomes the dynamic gesture and composition, words become aesthetic forms on the canvas, encouraging a more interpretive and sensitive involvement with the work. Luanshu represents, in some ways, the culmination of Wang Dongling’s enduring vocation to modernize calligraphy into a universal art surpassing philological and teleological limitations. The characters written in the style are often illegible, but not invented. They are the result of a lifetime of intensive practice, repetition, and experimentation through which the master can liberate form from language, permitting transfiguration to occur.

The underlying intention of the curation of this exhibition is to reify the spirit and expression of Wang Dongling. This show does not endeavor to survey or provide a comprehensive retrospective of his work,which, taken together, spans sixty years across all classical, and many newly founded, forms of calligraphy. The aim, instead, is to provide an invitation to engage with the core of Wang Dongling’s art. This site-specific installation for the Heong Gallery at Downing College draws inspiration from a selection of excerpts from the writings of the legendary Daoist master, Laozi, and the Cambridge theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, in an extra-temporal exchange of visionary minds. By juxtaposing these texts within the gallery, the curation of Ink. Space. Time. alludes to a shared pioneering energy, as well as a harmonious engagement among diverse intellectual traditions and practices that have informed and inspired the artist throughout his career. The words of Hawking and Laozi are positioned facing one another in the space, as if engaged in direct dialogue with each other. This disposition is an invitation to appreciate the presence of both Western and Eastern theories and traditions in shaping Wang Dongling’s development, as well as a deliberate gesture aimed at decoupling the longstanding East/West dichotomy in interpretations of contemporary Chinese art. Rediscovering Hawking and Laozi in this dialogue at once incarnates the universal aesthetic experience of Wang Dongling’s art, while simultaneously drawing attention to the symbolic significance of the work of each of these pioneering figures. Under the hand of Wang Dongling, the source texts in the exhibition space are rendered incomprehensible, and, thereby, transcend their original semantic content. Embodied in the lines, as well, is a novel awareness of the cosmic power and potential of words to transform visually and semantically. The artworks, therefore, represent an intersection of temporalities, and a recognition of the enduring influence of profound ideas.

讲座现场，剑桥大学一百多名师生参加

展览前言

露西·霍金

很高兴有机会可以向大家介绍书法家王冬龄的作品。他将我父亲的一些最具代表性的文字，用乱书这样一种书法形式进行演绎。在这种视觉语言中，清晰的文字有时会变成纯粹的抽象图形。将我父亲的话语与老子的著作配对，是极具启发的选择。道家大师与伟大的现代宇宙学家都对现实的本质、自发性的重要性的进行了深入研究。更重要是，他们都乐于在挑战并突破常规的过程中寻找乐趣，这使他们敢于拒绝任何形式的大一统保守观念。两人都远远超越了他们存在的物质界限，与浩瀚的宇宙进行交流——无论是通过大道还是穿越时间回到宇宙大爆炸的起点。王冬龄选择我父亲的话语，以这种方式进行重新想象，深思熟虑地说明了这两个历史人物之间的美好联系。

我父亲与中国也颇有渊源，他自己的父亲、杰出的医学研究者弗兰克-霍金博士也是如此。在职业生涯中，弗兰克和斯蒂芬都数次走访中国。我父亲的一个学生回忆说，20世纪80年代父亲在北京做了一个讲座，听众非常多。为了能听到我父亲的演讲，听众们都不得不爬上窗台。后来，我父亲在微博上做了一次惊人的亮相：他的微博关注的人数在当时是最高的，甚至超过了汤姆-克鲁斯，这让他很高兴！当时微博上的一个用户询问他对道家大师庄子的哲学观点“庄周梦蝶”的看法，这问题引发了他的兴趣，他也对此做出了回答：

“我们必须孜孜不倦探索关于存在的基本命题，只有这样也许才会知道蝴蝶（或宇宙）是真实存在。”

我希望你可以在这个美丽、发人深省的展览中找到乐趣，这里有关于时间和空间的深刻主题，当你吸收王冬龄的作品时，你可以找到那个发现自己“存在”的瞬间。

Preface

Lucy Hawking

I am delighted to introduce you to the work of calligrapher Wang Dongling, who has interpreted some of my father’s most iconic statements as luanshu – chaos script - a form of calligraphy in which legible script flows at times into pure abstraction. Pairing my father’s words with the writings of Laozi is an inspired choice. Both the Daoist master and the great modern cosmologist were deeply engaged with the nature of reality, the importance of spontaneaity and a sense of mischievious fun which emboldened them to reject any kind of authoritarianism. And both reached far beyond the boundaries of their terrestrial existences to commune with the immense expanses of the universe, whether through the Great Dao or by traveling back in time to the Big Bang itself. In choosing my father’s words to reimagine in this way, Wang Dongling has thoughtfully illustrated a beautiful connection between these two historic figures.

My father also had deep connections with China, as did his own father, Dr Frank Hawking, a distinguished medical researcher. Both Frank and Stephen travelled extensively across China throughout their respective careers. In the 1980’s, a student of my father’s recalled him giving a lecture in Beijing which was so well-attended that audience members hung from window frames in order to be able to hear my father speak. In later life, my father made a stunning entrance onto Weibo, where he had highest number of sign ups recorded at the time, outdoing, to his delight, Tom Cruise! He chose to answer a question on Weibo, posed by a well wisher on his views about the famous butterfly connundrum attributed to Zhuangzi, another Daoist . My father replied:

‘We must keep striving for an understanding of the fundamental questions of existence. And then perhaps we will know whether the butterfly - and the universe - are real or just in our dreams.’

I hope you enjoy this beautiful and thought provoking exhibition with its profound themes of time and space and that you while you absorb Wang Dongling’s work, you are able to take a moment just to be.

开幕式王冬龄现场书写徐志摩《再别康桥》：“我悄悄的走了，正如我悄悄的来，挥一挥衣袖，不带走一片云彩！”

转载｜“乱书”在剑桥：王冬龄个展博文精选墨斋崇真艺客

关于墨斋画廊

墨斋基于北京和纽约，其使命是通过精心策划的展览项目，展现中国实验水墨对国际当代艺术的独特贡献。墨斋展览均由深度艺评，学术交流，中英双语出版和多媒体内容作为支持。墨斋的项目包含来自中国（大陆、台湾、香港）、韩国，以及日本的战后和当代艺术家，其中包括冰逸、张耀煌、陈海燕、程延平、戴光郁、丁桥、何云昌、熊辉、黄致阳、井上有一、马文、郑光熙、康春慧、金钟九、李仁、劳同丽，李津、李华生、林贤洛、林玉相、刘丹、彭康隆、苏煌盛、陶艾民、曾建颖、韦邦雨、王冬龄、王天德、魏立刚、徐冰、杨诘苍、郑重宾，并展出多媒介作品，包括绘画、书法、雕塑、装置、表演、摄影和影像。自2012年创立至今，墨斋多次被邀请参与纽约军械库艺术展，香港巴塞尔艺术展，上海西岸艺术设计博览会等国际艺术活动，其代理作品已被大都会美术馆，洛杉矶郡艺术博物馆，布鲁克林博物馆和香港M+博物馆等公共机构收藏。