By Dai Zhuoqun

Human civilization started from crafting. However, within the entire philosophy world and modern art history, this great system has been only put under the name of ‘artisan’. It is excluded from the vision of intellectual reflection thus posited in the bottom of the collective self-recognition of modern civilization.

During the historical development from modern art towards postmodern art, artisan tradition is further distained while the empiricism and practical reason were abandoned drastically. The overall value orientation of postmodernism is also entrapped into the plight of confusion and emptiness through the single-dimensional linguistic logic and historical venation of pop art, minimalism, ready-made and conceptual art. The crack appeared when rationalism and empiricism were separated cannot be fixed, lead to the refreshing of the aspiration for material and sensation in the return to the reality.

How can art prove its reason and value for its existence through the individual life experience? This is the main question left by the postmodern conceptual system to art. The boundary among different media in classical art has been broken, however, as a conversed dilemma, for a lot of people the way to pursue the extreme rational concepts on the one hand is not able to reveal the characteristic of art, and on the other hand is too detached, conceptual, obscure and doctrinal.

Under such precondition, Qiu Qijin finds a means of conceptual communication and verification between the modernity and traditional skills after reviewing the traditional art form of “Kam ash heap” in eastern art.

“Kam ash heap” is also called “Bapotu”, or “Jipo”, “Jizhen”, “Dafanzizhilou”, etc. It was said to be painted for the first time by the painter Qian Xuan, in Yuan Dynasty, once when he was drunk. He depicted the leftovers like crab claw, shells, lotus seed pot, chicken plum, fishbone and so on randomly onto a handscroll, and then wrote down the title “Kam ash heap”. When it comes to Ming Dynasty, “Kam ash heap” started to be influenced by the western realistic painting style, vividly illustrated the common debris in ancient literati’s study room. For example, there are antique paintings and calligraphy, waste rubbings, bronze rubbings, eave tiles rubbings, antique books which have been partly damaged by worms, waste painting draft, fans, letters, etc.

Qiu Qijin borrows the name and form of “Kam ash heap” to create his jade carving works “Leftovers Series”, “Study Room Series”, “Antique Series”. This is the first time that the main elements and forms of “Kam ash heap” are represented through carving. As a kind of relatively uncommon painting style which has disappeared, “Kam ash heap”, however, obtains crucial value of reflection in the current culture context. The detailed yet secular and useless content in “Kam ash heap”, went through the abrasion of extreme realistic skills by traditional artisan. To some extends, it has dispelled and overthrown the logoscentrism and the aesthetic standards set by elite culture, then established a modern representation.