邓晓芒，华中科技大学哲学系教授。

　　我是研究哲学的，对于美术我是一个“外行”，只是有一点业余爱好和兴趣而已，没有受过正规训练和行家指点。昨天童老师邀请我，给我画了一个肖像，我看了以后很有感触。在画的过程中，我也和他有一些交流，讲到传统与现当代的美术观念，一边画和被画，一边谈画，那真是一种美好的感觉！我们谈到，传统中国山水画、中国传统美术与现代人受到西方影响的美术观念看起来好像差得很远，但是实际上有一种交合。特别是胡塞尔现象学产生了影响以后，很多人都在琢磨现象学究竟是怎么回事，为什么在艺术方面那么多人对现象学的这一套观念那么趋之若鹜？根据我的理解，胡塞尔的现象学实际上就是让人回到你本原的视觉观看，回到你最初的直观，那是还没有被科学、常识这一套东西建构起来的直观。我想那一套直观就是婴儿的直观，人刚生出来连远近、空间这些感觉都没有，不知道近大远小，更谈不上物体、实体的概念，他以为就是一些色块在那里动来动去。如果一辆玩具车跑到门后面去了，他就会哭起来，以为玩具“变没了”，要到稍大一点才会明白，物体是不会变没有的，它还“在那里”。但是这些色块本身已经就有一种直觉了，这就是婴儿的直觉。所以婴儿眼睛看人的时候，他不是仔细分辨你眼睛的构造怎么样，或者你的鼻子和下巴的比例怎么样，他就是凭直觉一揽子整体把握，就是一个印象。我们中国人也讲，这个人很“面善”，什么叫做面善？这是婴儿的感觉，就是看起来很舒服，婴儿看人就是这样，一个人他一下就记住了。大人常常很奇怪，为什么有些人很惹孩子喜欢，有“小孩缘”，而有些人虽然并不是坏人，但是小孩子就是不喜欢他。这就是一种直觉，婴儿他自身有那么一种感觉，那种感觉如果画家能够抓住，那才真正是艺术的感觉。

　　我看了童先生的画以后，我感觉这全都是婴儿在看人的时候留下的印象。他给我画的肖像，我觉得像极了，这就是我平时的样子。但又说不出哪里像，眼睛几乎都没有画出来，其他地方也只是一些笔触，与素描中的块面结构都对不上号。当然童先生有他自己的理论，他强调的正是中国山水画的“笔触”，这是非常好的一种分析手段。我的一个学生刚刚在捷克拿了美学博士的学位，她的博士论文写的就是“绘画中的笔触”，把东西方美术史中的笔触进行了一番系统的对比和分析，得到了教授们的一致好评。因为这种比较在他们西方人那里是闻所未闻的，很让他们大开眼界。简单说，就是西方人历来是要隐藏笔触的，西方的古典主义，以至于整个现代以前的西方美术都要隐藏笔触，隐藏得越好这个画就越真实，因为自然界里面是没有笔触的。而中国画是靠笔触起家的，中国画强调笔墨功底，强调字画一体，特别是文人画、山水画，画的什么先不说，要看你如何画，如何走笔。那些松竹梅、花鸟虫鱼、包括山水，好像写字一样，讲究笔墨之间的一股气韵。整幅山水就看你的“气象”如何，有气象就有精神，并不在乎透视关系。我觉得他用这个来解释有很大的解释力，他用这种方式来画油画，这应该是一种开创性的画法。所以他送给我的画册，这一页是肖像，对照那一页就是细部放大，细部就是凸显他的笔触是怎么运作、怎么走笔的，他强调的这个东西，我觉得这是西方没有的。为什么在西方他的画这么风靡？恐怕和这个有一定关系，因为它有东方的元素在里面，而东方元素里面恰好隐藏着人类在婴儿时代的直观的眼光。那种眼光看起来好像很幼稚，不成形，但是它其实是长久的，一旦被透视法定型了，反而失去精神了。童老师的画初看起来可能觉得不怎么像，或者细部不怎么准确，甚至有的地方没有画出来，好像没有“画完”，比如连眼睛都根本不画，模糊过去。但是放久了以后越看越觉得像，觉得就是这么一个人，他一进来你不用细看，突然一眼看去你就知道这是谁。他的特点不是从细部显示出来的，而是从整体显示出来的。童先生最喜欢举的“庖丁解牛”的典故就体现在这个方面，就是画家在达到“目无全牛”的境界时，却把内在的本质性的那些东西用一种笔触无意之间表达出来了，你看不出来他是刻意要表现这个立体、这个块面，没有刻意的经营。当然实际上是有的，但是已经成了他的本能的肢体动作，他是无意中显示出来的。这就是我理解的童先生的艺术的妙趣。

​Back to the Baby's View: About Mr. Tong's Portraits

　　Deng Xiaomang,Professor of Department of Philosophy, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

　　I am a philosopher. As for the fine arts, I am a "layman" since I have not received any formal training and expert advice but have a little interest on it. Yesterday, Mr. Tong invited me to be his model and he drew a portrait of me. I was quite impressed when I saw the portrait of me. Also we had some communication during the course. We talked about traditional and contemporary art concepts while he painted and I was being painted, which is really a good feeling! We think that traditional Chinese landscape painting, traditional Chinese art and people's concepts of art influenced by the West in modern time seem to be far from each other, but there is actually an intersection. For example, the influence of Husserl's phenomenology encourages many people to wonder what phenomenology is really about. Why phenomenology is so popular in the field of art? In my view, Husserl's phenomenology actually allows people to return to their original views, and back to their original intuitions, which is intuition that has not been constructed by science and common sense. I think it is the baby's intuition. When one was born, he doesn't have the feeling of distance or space. He doesn't know the size or the distance, not to mention the concept of object or entity. He thinks there are some colors moving around there as blocks. If a toy car runs behind the door, he will cry since he thinks that the toy "has disappeared". He will not understand until he is a little older when he knows the object will not disappear, and it is still "there". But these color blocks have already been intuition, which is the baby's intuition. When a baby looks at you, his eyes don't carefully distinguish the structure of your eyes, or the proportion of your nose and chin, but intuitively have an overall grasp, which is an impression. We Chinese also say that someone "looks familiar to me". Why? It is the baby's feeling that the person looks very comfortable. It is the way a baby looks at people. Generally, baby can remember someone at once. Adults often wonder why some people are very popular with children and have "ties of child", while others are not as though they are not bad people. This is a kind of intuition that the baby himself has. If the painter can catch that kind of feeling, it is really the feeling of art.

　　Mr. Tong's paintings enlighten me that they are all the impressions of babies when babies are watching people. The portrait he painted for me is extremely vivid and that is what I usually look like. But I can't tell the exactly similar point since the eyes are hardly drawn, and other parts are just brush strokes, which do not match the block structure in the sketch. Of course, Mr. Tong has his own theory. He emphasizes the "brush strokes" of Chinese landscape painting, which is a very good analytical method. One of my students just got a doctorate in aesthetics in Czech Republic. Her doctoral dissertation is about "brush strokes in painting". It systematically compares and analyses the brush strokes in the history of eastern and Western art, and has won the unanimous praise of professors. This kind of comparison is unheard for them, and it is really an eye-opener. Simply speaking, Westerners always hide strokes. Western classicism, even the entire pre-modern Western art tend to hide strokes. The better they hid, the more real the painting is, because there is no stroke in nature. However, Chinese painting is based on brush strokes. Chinese painting emphasizes the basic skills of writing with brush and ink, and the integration of calligraphy and painting, especially literati painting and landscape painting. It depends on how you draw and how you go about brushing regardless of the content. Those pines, bamboos, plums, flowers, birds, insects and fish, including landscapes, pay attention to the charm between brush and ink as writing words. The whole landscape depends on your "meteorology". If one has the spirit of meteorology, he will not care about perspective relation. I think his great explanatory power is exactly in this way. He paints oil paintings in this way, which should be a pioneering painting method. The picture album he sent me shows what he emphasizes. One page for the portrait and the corresponding page are about detail enlargement. Details highlight how his strokes work, and how to go about the brush. That is what he stresses, and I think Western doesn't own. Why is his painting so popular in the West? It has something to do with this. In his portraits, the Oriental elements just hide the intuitive vision of human beings in infancy. That kind of vision seems very naive and shapeless, but it is actually long-term. Once it is stereotyped by perspective law, it loses its spirits. Teacher Tong's paintings may not look very similar as the model at first sight, or the details are not very accurate, or even some parts are not painted, as if they were not "painted out", for example, even the eyes are not painted at all but with a blurring trace. However, with time goes by, the more time you spend in appreciating, the more vivid it is. You will feel that the portrait is the person modeled. You don't have to look carefully when you come in, but suddenly you will know who is about the portrait. His characteristics are not shown in detail, but as the whole. Mr. Tong's favorite allusion of "Dismembering an Ox by A Skillful Butcher Pao Ding" is embodied in this way. When the painter reaches the realm of "see an ox not as a whole", he inadvertently expresses the intrinsic essence of those things with a stroke. You will not notice that he intentionally wants to show this three-dimensional object or some parts, or has a deliberate management. Of course, he does, and it has become his instinctive body movements, which he shows unconsciously. That's what I understand about Mr. Tong's art.