Porcelain: A Contemporary Cultural Touchstone
瓷器——现当代文化的试金石
Nancy Selvage, 2012
江西景德镇有着一千年的制瓷史，它地处南中国，特有的地理环境为它提供了丰富的原材料，几个世纪的瓷土和釉料生产技术的发展，大规模定烧御用瓷，供不应求的全球贸易，以及各种具备专业熟练技能的拉坯工、釉工、烧窑工所形成的庞大产业体系。从十三世纪至十九世纪初，这座小城不仅是御用瓷的主要烧制地，也是整个世界的瓷器生产地。它对全球范围内的文化交流、审美、制瓷技术以及日常生活都产生了巨大的影响。
Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province has a thousand-year history of porcelain production thanks to abundant raw materials provided by southern China’s unique geological history, centuries of clay and glaze development, large scale imperial patronage, ravenous global demand, and an enormous industry of specialized and skilled clay fabricators, glaze painters, and kiln firers. This small city was the major source of porcelain for the imperial court as well as for the entire world from the thirteenth through the early nineteenth century, greatly impacting cultural exchange, aesthetics, ceramic technology, and daily life globally.
中东与欧洲经过了几个世纪的实验，欧洲才终于在1709年生产出第一件瓷器，比中国晚了一千年。这些实验虽然没能生产出瓷器，却为发展新的陶瓷技术做出了贡献。
Europe was not able to produce porcelain until 1709, a thousand years later than <?China and after centuries of experiments throughout the Middle East and Europe. These experiments failed to produce porcelain, but they did develop valuable new ceramic technologies.
在过去的几十年中，景德镇正在重获新生，在世界陶瓷发展的舞台上扮演着新的角色。当代艺术家们正如景德镇历史上的瓷器出口一样具有流动性与多元化特征，这座城市所积累的深厚的陶瓷专业知识以及创造性使它成为中国乃至全世界学生、艺术家和设计师们心中的圣地。各种培训计划、艺术家驻地和大量的熟练工、工作室给这些“朝圣者”提供了条件。同时，这些外来者带来的想法与定制业务也拓宽了景德镇的视野与选择。
Within the past generation Jingdezhen is experiencing a renaissance and has a new role to play in the development of world ceramics. Now that contemporary artists are as mobile and multicultural as Jingdezhen’s historic exports, this city’s remarkable concentration of ceramics expertise and creativity has become a mecca for Chinese and international students, artists, and designers. A variety of educational programs and artist residencies and a wealth of skilled labor and studio workshops support the increasing influx. In exchange, the new talent brings ideas and commissions that expand visions and options.
在改革开放时期，景德镇的陶艺家在复兴、保护和发展文化遗产中扮演着特殊的角色。在面对国际交流所带来的新机遇以及城市的创新发展中，他们将流传了一千年的陶瓷传统手工技艺与基础保持了下来，可以想见他们当时所处的一系列极其罕见的情境。
During the reform period of the last few decades, Jingdezhen’s porcelain artists have been in the unique position of being able to participate in the resurrection, preservation, and contemporary development of their cultural heritage. The confluence of new opportunities for global exchange and creative development within a city, that has maintained the infrastructure and skills for a millennium-old craft tradition, is an extremely rare set of circumstances.
许多中国当代独立艺术家被吸引到景德镇，试图用瓷作为一块“试金石”来表达与检验文化认同。对他们中的有些人来说，在中国贸易瓷中将不同文化下形成的中式材料与外国样式混合起来，具有一种内在的关联性。历史上出口瓷的文化混杂性反映了个人多元文化经历和家庭谱系。
Attracted to Jingdezhen, several contemporary Chinese diaspora artists have come to use porcelain as a “touchstone” for expressing and examining cultural identity. For some of them the cultural mix of Chinese materials with foreign styles in China-trade porcelain has a new relevance. The hybrid nature of historic export ware reflects personal multi-cultural experiences and family histories.
在二十世纪，许多西方陶艺家和艺术家拒斥装饰性、技巧的完美性以及资产阶级价值取向，从而割断与中国出口品和工业产品的关联。在与这些审美取向形成鲜明对比下，纯净的白瓷重新获得了陶艺家们的青睐。当代艺术家正在从十八、十九世纪审美趣味中探寻新的关联性，而这种兴趣也正在工业产品与工业化进程中重燃。对西方艺术家来说，这些关联范围包括了挪用、文化意象的重读、挑衅的社会性言论、概念边缘的怀旧情结以及写作生产过程。
Throughout the twentieth century most Western studio potters and artists rejected the decorative tastes, skilled perfection, and value of the bourgeois objects associated with Chinese export ware and industrial manufacture. In sharp contrast to these aesthetic values, the purity of white porcelain has regained favor among studio potters, contemporary artists are finding new relevance in eighteenth and nineteenth-century aesthetics, and there is a renewed interest in industrial products and processes. For Western artists these areas of relevance include appropriated reuse, reinterpretations of cultural iconography, provocative social commentary, nostalgia with a conceptual edge, and collaborative production processes.
此次展览中的所有艺术家以其文化视角的多样性、思想与情感的推动力、创造性与人生境遇，为景德镇当代陶瓷艺术的发展与繁荣注入了活力与生机。在景德镇非凡的制瓷史上，这一过渡时期正孕育着新一代的当地人才，吸引着全世界的目光，汇聚着中国乃至全世界的艺术家、手工艺者以及设计师。
All of the artists in this exhibition have invigorated the development and flowering of contemporary porcelain art in Jingdezhen with the diversity of their cultural perspectives, intellectual and emotional impetus, creative skills, and personal experiences. This fertile period in Jingdezhen’s remarkable history is nourishing a new generation of local talent, capturing global attention, and attracting national and international artists, craftsmen, and designers.