​　　我和童雁汝南有过多次展览与现场肖像写生工作上的接触。根据我的现场经验来看，他是一个活在当下的艺术家。他对对象的观看不是一种客观性的观看，而是一种主观性的观看。童雁汝南的肖像画工作就是一种见证。他的绘画方式和展示方式，肯定是经过分析哲学、符号学、观念艺术的时代洗礼的一种结果。这些知识演进的当代语境童雁汝南都经历过、关注过。在这些知识经验的积累之后，他的肖像观看和之前的古典的肖像观看是不一样的。童雁汝南在武汉美术馆这个展览中有一种新颖的展示方式，规格整齐划一的小幅肖像油画以满墙分行分列的形式进行陈列，看上去有一点像元素周期表表格。作品图像格式也是一致的，都是胸部以上的人物头像，都是现场写生的结果。但是这种千篇一律的格式让观者看到的却不是传统的古典肖像，而是艺术家对不同人物对象特征瞬间捕捉和快捷把握的一种结果。由此，童雁汝南也是在证明自己的当下性，这是他对前人的一种超越。在这种超越中，童雁汝南其实已经把肖像画本身从对象分析过渡到了对人性的分析。所以我们看每个人的肖像都是个性鲜明的，整个作品的笔触、色彩、造型等绘画性因素也是鲜活的。画面上，一些笔触甚至还留存着一种速度感。我举个实例。2016年我策划了童雁汝南在蒙古国家美术馆为不同人物轮流画写生肖像的活动。一个蒙古国的美女商人也来当他30分钟现场写生的志愿模特。一开始她兴高采烈，结果肖像写生进行到一半，画还没有完成，美女就已经负气出走了。她边走边撂下一句话“把我画得这么丑”。但是童雁汝南画的那些蒙古国的高级知识分子，每个人做志愿模特都坚持到了最后。而且每个志愿者在画成之后都会非常认真地观看、解读和认知他的画，成为行使肖像画的观者裁决权的第一人。他们反而感觉童雁汝南的画抓住了自己的特征，并给予各自的认可。确实，童雁汝南在他的绘画中有一个主客体关系的精彩把握。有的时候画家是主体、观看者，他的肖像对象是客体。这种关系在写生现场有时候又是交互的。这就是一种“面对面”、“你看我，我也看你”的关系。童雁汝南认为人和人的互动关系是双向的，是互为主客体观的一种关系。正如童雁汝南的画所呈现的那样，观者所看到肖像模特其实也在人与人对视的关系之中。肖像油画所表现的一个个人物也在以或真切、或空洞、或虚无缥缈的眼神看观众，实际上，他或她是在写生现场注视着画家童雁汝南本人。所以，童雁汝南的肖像作品有一个写生瞬间的时间性。在这个时间性的画面表达中，观者可以看到并感受到模特对象的面部肌肉的运动，却难以辨识其表皮、表象和表情的现实细节。童雁汝南在肖像写生现场的短短几十分钟里面，一直在试图把握模特对象生命存在的运动感。模特对象就是活的对象。画家在审视模特对象的同时，模特对象也在以主体的身份反视画家本人以及可能代入画家角色和立场的每一个观者。童雁汝南以这样的一种针对肖像画主体的极具个人经验特征的对象表达与对象表现，否定了以前古典主义、现实主义画家热衷扮演的一种犹如上帝般全知全能的角色，即以一种纯粹客观、事无巨细地去表现肖像人物的传统方式方法，从而还肖像画为一种现代社会的日常经验、日常感知。现实主义画家强调眼见为实，童雁汝南则强调眼见为虚。世间万物皆为虚象。万物之现象界，空间变动不居，时间稍纵即逝。人之肖像又岂不是如此。童雁汝南的肖像画并不拘泥于物理现实，也不受限于传统教条，从而洋溢着一种生命存在的动感。这种动感浸淫着艺术家对事物本质的一种理解和对绘画语言表现上的一种良知。因而，童雁汝南的人物肖像往往是一种反馈存在感知的、极具符号学意义的现代人的精神肖像。

　　在肖像写生绘画之中，童雁汝南热衷于捕捉每一个人物对象能够让他捕捉得到的精神特点。我发现他每张画的色彩和笔触都是独一无二的，甚至每张画面孔的构成也是独一无二的。当然他画面上也有一些对人物面孔出格特点的精准捕捉。这些捕捉其实缘自他的个体认知，毕竟童雁汝南在画他自己的一张画，难免个性彰显并张扬。他的这些肖像应该就是一种精神肖像，应该就是一种非直观论的肖像。因为直观论讲究的是眼见为实，但是童雁汝南就想画眼见不为实。他把人的面孔到面相之间的关联放在一种对符号认知的关联上来考虑，所以他不再把一个肖像画对象的外部特征去做事无巨细的表达，而是致力与把对象的心理特征、心理属性非常准确地把握、体现出来。所以我们也可以在这些肖像上非常容易的认出来我们的熟人，比如说这个肖像画画的是批评家鲁虹，那个画的是画家冷军。因为童雁汝南把握到了鲜活人物真实的心理属性。他的肖像是一种众生人物的心理肖像。

Portraits Made By Tong Yanrunan

Gu Zhenqing

　　Tong Yanrunan and I come into several times of contact in many expositions and on-site portraying activities. My experiences about on-site activities tell me that he is an artist living in the present. His view of the object is not objective, but subjective. His course of portraying work is a witness of that. His way of painting and display is definitely a result of the baptism of the times through the analysis of philosophy, semiotics and conceptual art. Of course, Tong has experienced and paid attention to those contemporary contexts of knowledge evolution. Based on the accumulation of these knowledge and experience, his portrait viewing is different from the previous viewing of classical portrait. Tong Yanrunan exhibits his works in Wuhan Museum of Art in a novel way. Small portraits with uniform specifications are displayed in rows and lines on the wall, which looks a little bit like a periodic table of the elements. The image format of the works is also consistent. They are all portraits of parts above the chest of people. They are all painted from life. What the uniform format allows viewers to witness are not something from traditional classical portraits, but the result of the artist's instant capture and quick grasp of the characteristics of different characters and objects. Thus, Tong proves his present nature, which is a transcendence of his predecessors. This transcendence actually enables Tong Yanrunan to transit the portrait itself from object analysis to human nature analysis. Therefore, we can see that every portrait has a distinct personality, and the painting factors of the whole portrait, such as strokes, colors and shapes are also vivid. On the screen, some brush strokes even retain a sense of speed. Let me give you an example. In 2016, I planned an activity for Tong Yanrunan to draw different figures in turn in Mongolia National Art Museum. A beautiful businesswoman from Mongolia also came to be a volunteer model for his 30-minute live portraying. At first she was in high spirits. However, she had left angrily before the painting was finished. As she walked along, she left one word behind, "Draw me so ugly". The senior Mongolian intellectuals, however, who were painted by Tong Yanrunan adhered to the end as volunteer models. At last, every volunteer appreciated, understood and recognized his paintings very carefully after they are painted and they became the first person to exercise the judgment power as the viewer. They feel that Tong Yanrunan's paintings grasp their own characteristics, so they conducted mutual recognition. Indeed, Tong Yanrunan has a wonderful catching of the relationship between subject and object in his paintings. Sometimes, the painter is considered as the subject or the viewer, and his model is the object. Sometimes, the relationship is interactive in the on-site portraying scene. This is a relationship of "face to face" and "when you see me, I see you too". Tong Yanrunan believes that human interaction is bidirectional, and it is also a relationship between subject and object. As the paintings made by Tong Yanrunan show, the portrait models look at the viewers with a clear, or empty, or illusory eyes. In fact, he or she is watching the painter, Tong Yanrunan, in the on-site portraying. Therefore, there is a temporality in his portrait works. This temporal picture expression enables the viewer to see and feel the facial muscles movements of models, but it is difficult to identify the realistic details of their skin, appearances and expressions. During the portraying course, Tong Yanrunan has been trying to catch the mobile sense of model's life existence in the short tens of minutes. Models are living objects. The painter looks at the model when he conducts portraying. At the same time, the object acts as the subject, looking at the painter and every viewer who may take the role and position of the painter. Regarding portraiture, Tong Yanrunan has an extremely individual expression for the object. He denies a God-like omnipotent role that classical and realistic painters were keen to play, but expresses portraits in a purely objective and non-trivial way, so as to return portraits to a feeling of daily experience and perception in modern society. Realist painters emphasize that seeing is true, while Tong Yanrunan emphasizes that seeing is false. Everything in the world is an illusion. The phenomenal realm of all things shows that space changes constantly and time fleets. Aren't they portraits of people? Portrait paintings made by Tong Yanrunan are not confined to physical reality, or to traditional dogma, but are brimming with a sense of life existence. The mobile sense is immersed in the artist's understanding of the essence of things and his conscience in the expression of painting language. Therefore, portraits made by Tong Yanrunan are a kind of spiritual portrait of modern people with perceptive feedback and semiotic significance.

　　With regard to portraying from life, Tong Yanrunan is keen to capture the spiritual characteristics that are available for him. I found that colors and strokes of each painting are unique, and even the composition of each face is unique. Of course, he has also captured some precise characteristics of people's faces. These captures actually stem from his individual cognition. Tong Yanrunan paints by himself, which inevitably highlights and publicizes his personality. These portraits made by him should be considered as one spiritual portrait, and it should be non-intuitionistic one. Intuitionism holds that seeing is believing, but Tong Yanrunan wants to draw that seeing is not believing. He views the relationship between human faces in a way of symbol recognition. Therefore, he doesn't conduct the external characteristics of portrait objects with detail expressions any more, but tries to catch and reflect the object's psychological characteristics and attributes very accurately. So we can also easily recognize our acquaintances from these portraits. For example, this is a portrait of the critic Lu Hong and that is Leng Jun. Since Tong Yanrunan catches the real psychological attributes of the vivid characters, portraits made by him are considered as one psychological portrait of all living beings.