Dao•Qi ~ Spirit ＆ Vessel： Shi Yuren’s Story

Born in Yu Yao, Zhejiang Province, on February 2, 1928, Shi Wenling came from a family of small business people. Orphaned by age 9, he was a diligent student with a precocious talent for art. In his hometown, he was drawing on the sidewalk in front of a Roman Catholic Church when a priest took notice of him. The church gave him support in those difficult, lonely years and taught him the religion he would cherish throughout his life. In high school, he chose the characters “yu” and “ren” for his given names. Taken from  a Confucian text whose moral means “whatever you do not like, do not do to others,” the characters translate directly as “give to others.” The name was prophetic: until his death at age 68 in a bicycle accident, Shi Yuren shared his wisdom with his students and his love of porcelain with his beloved city, Jingdezhen. He was a man passionately, irrevocably dedicated to art and to teaching. Zhong Liansheng, among his first generation of students, featured in this exhibition, described him in a published article as “the bridge between past and present… who has had the very deepest influence on Jingdezhen’s porcelain through his design ideas and the students he trained.” The gifts Shi Yuren gave would change the direction of porcelain in China and revitalize its heritage during his lifetime and into the present century.

After graduating from Zhejiang Fine Arts Academy in 1952, Shi Yuren studied at China’s most prestigious and rigorous Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts where he graduated at the top of his class in 1954. Asked by his teachers to stay an extra year in Beijing, Shi Yuren arrived in Jingdezhen in the spring of 1955, age 27. So young, so knowledgeable, so full of energy and grace, he was thrilled to come to Jingdezhen.

During those first years in Jingdezhen, Shi Yuren restructured the curriculum along the lines of the Central Academy. Shi Yuren was a founding member of the newly-formed Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, created in 1958 by merging three schools. He became the first chair of the Ceramic Institute’s Department of Art and Design. His classmate at the Central Academy and a renowned ceramic sculptor in China today.

Those bursts of joy came at a heavy price. In 1957, just two years after coming to Jingdezhen with a bounce in his step and hope in his heart, Shi Yuren was 1abeled a youpai or rightist.

In 1965, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, In the hysteria of the Cultural Revolution, his house was nonetheless ransacked. His art -- his brush, his brush holder, his porcelain -- and his classroom, these were once again denied him. For an artist and teacher, that comes far too close to dying.

Dark times. Shattered lives. So many stories. So much pain. But that is the past. Nevertheless, we cannot help but grieve that Shi Yuren’s curriculum vitae is so short. The story of his professional life takes up just one page because the space between l958 and 1979 is empty. Shi Yuren endured those harsh years because he felt it was the government, not his colleagues or students, who were responsible for the retaliatory behavior.

Shi Yuren petitioned for and received notice of the erasure of his alleged guilt which finally restored his good name in 1979.

In 1978, Zhu Danian, a well-known artist in Beijing who died in 1995, invited Shi Yuren, his youpai status notwithstanding, to gather a group of Jingdezhen artisans together to create a large mural for the Beijing airport. Shi Yuren and other artists who worked on the design were in truth some of China’s living national treasures. Liu Haixian has carefully preserved Shi Yuren’s original blueprint. Made of elaborately painted porcelain tiles featuring the lush tropical landscape of Yunnan Province, the beautiful mural is entitled “Song of the Forest.” It can still be admired in the airport today.

In the early 1980’s, Shi Yuren began to create what could be called his signature style. Just when this mature phase began cannot be specified.

It was as if he cut out pieces from textiles, qinghua vessels, paper and wood cuts, and other folk crafts and then layered them carefully, onto the skin of the vessel. He placed one piece against another. Always, he understood the 3-D fullness of the curved planes, so the motifs stretched and moved to accommodate the differences made by swelling and tapering.

His process looks almost as if he had taken his treasured shard collection and reglued the pieces -- not to put them back the way they were, but rather, to create a whole new space for something beautiful and lasting. These “quotations” from the past bring the work eternally into the present. His design holds the vessel together with words from long ago, spoken in a voice from today. For the first time, his collage technique breaks up the vessel’s geometry and symmetry, while at the same time, opens up new ways of thinking about how to bring the dao into the qi.

In yet another departure, by wrapping the vessel on the diagonal, Shi Yuren also rethinks porcelain’s traditional verticality. He did what he expected his students to do: learn from the past, find your own voice, and boldly contribute to enrich the heritage of porcelain for the future. Another one of his very special touches was to sprinkle bright red triangles about the vessel, sometimes up and over the lip to the inside. His family says that these colorful geometric forms represent the pieces of red paper left over after fire crackers have gone off. Pop, pop! Pao, pao! You can feel the energy that each touch of red releases. Each triangle speaks of optimism and celebration.

In 1986, Shi Yuren went to Hong Kong as a participant in the first Jingdezhen ceramic artists’ exhibition. In 1990 to Macao, 1991 to Mongolia, 1992 to Singapore, and 1993 to Korea. He judged exhibitions, lectured, displayed and sold his work as one of Jingdezhen’s master artists, and taught without constraints. Shi Yuren was only 68 years old, in excellent health and revived spirits, when he died instantly on the night of March 3, 1996 after a taxi sideswiped his bicycle. Although a skilled rider, perhaps he could not hear the taxi’s motor on account of an old injury to his right ear sustained during the brutal months of criticism and interrogation. His candle had burned out much too quickly -- and not by nature’s hand. His death left yet more empty spaces, this time in porcelain, in the heart of his widow and family, in Jingdezhen, in China.

Shi Yuren was a forgiving man, perhaps thanks to his devout Catholic faith. A man who made the most beautiful and creative art in Jingdezhen. This is a Renaissance man for all four seasons in China. The symbolic f1owers of each -- the peony of spring, the lotus of summer, the chrysanthemum of fall, and the plum blossom of winter -- were among his favorites along with orchids, wisteria, night-blooming cereus, and camellias. He is a man who survived a very hard winter indeed.

“If you want to know about porcelain,” said Qin Xilin, one of the first generation of students, “you have only to interview my teacher. His spirit glows more brightly than gold.” His light radiates among the generations of artists trained by him. It illuminates the path of porcelain in Jingdezhen and beyond. His spirit shines in the vessels he made and the students he taught: the dao and the qi together, forever.

The article adapted from Carla Coch’s book, “Dao·Qi~Spririt & Vessel: Master Artist and Teacher Shi Yuren and Seven Artists Among His First Generation of Students”