by Wang Minan

The painting series before our eyes is a narrative about circumcision. If regarding it as a painting form, we should first of all respond to the following questions: Why did the painter choose circumcision as his painting target? And then why did he decide to present the excising process? That is to say, why did he adopt narrative way for it?

There are ten pieces of painting in all which own a common focus, namely penis. The penis is located at the centre of painting surface and moreover in sharp contrast to its background, which further highlights the object. In the painting history, it is nothing new to take penis as a centre. In reality, the male reproductive organ has served as an expression of some practice or imagination of Eros and of subsequent impulse to culture and politics. It is almost universal in human cultures that the sole signification of penis as a sign is sex. Since in essence penis is both subject and object of sex practice, it is simply sex as such and even not sex suggestion or symbol. Therefore, once it emerges in the picture, it at once reminds us of sex act and the viewer would habitually ask what kind of sex act, sex thought or idea it is. In the paintings, the penis is depicted as an extremely outstanding object and the other parts of human body are entirely wrapped in cloth. Facing such strong sex tint and naked display of penis, the viewer could feel a bit uncomfortable at first sight. 

Nevertheless, the uneasiness is little by little removed along with the development of narrative. The signification of penis changes in the narrative, or precisely speaking, the sex connotation conveyed by penis gradually weakens. In other words, separately in distinct picture areas, the reproductive organ starts to remold its own space of signification, a desexualized signification space. In this process, the sex connotation weakens along with the pictorial narrative but meanwhile another meaning grows up. The male reproductive organ regains another meaning space in which the organ is defined as a pure body organ rather than display itself as the subject and object of sex. Just as a hand, a foot, an ear, or an eye, it suffers from some ailment and needs treatment. In the picture, step by step divorced from the sex context, the penis is posited in a unique space. Although the organ still seems striking in the scene, it is somewhat ironic that such effect is produced by impotent means. It is right now a passive object clamped by a pair of scissors and a pair of white-gloved hands, subjected and controlled by the outside ferocious power and at its disposal. Endowed with various myths and imagination, successively beautified by diverse cultures, or condemned by them, such a latent energy, source and core of life, mystic power, or filthy object here takes on a new look before the viewer. Under excision, it seems simply helpless and lacking in its proper stubbornness and robustness. Apparently, the male reproductive organ acts outside the sex sphere in which it is neither mystic nor filthy, neither a taboo nor a provoker, neither a eulogy on life nor a hotbed of evil. It is nothing but a commonplace since it has already separated from the sex sphere, that is to say, from any symbolic background associated with sex, and from any quarrels and trouble all along carried on it. Eventually, it has transformed into a desexualized object. By now, the penis’s own connotation has changed in the picture as it is no more placed in a sex space but in a hospital, in a medical space, in a serious scientific space. It is just in this space and at this moment that examined by knowledgeable and calm eyes and conquered by science/instrument, the penis appears as a body organ, an organ with sex and cultural tint removed.

Although both excised with scissors, circumcision should not be identified with the ancient castration operation. Manipulating and dominating the penis just as circumcision, castration has never eradicates its sex color. Strengthening sex by means of removal, castration further concentrates the focus on sex rather than diverts people’s attention from it. It is true that castration acts as the expression of people’s negative imagination of sex since penis is a nuisance, some uncontrollable cumbrance as a result of sex desire while sex is regarded as something extremely troublesome. Sex as such has never been terminated thereby and instead intensified in a negative way, even though penis is once and away removed from the human body. Despite a medical operation, castration still treats the reproductive organ as a symbol of culture and on the contrary, the reproductive organ is viewed as a mere body organ rather than a cultural object in circumcision operation that never negatively highlights sex but eliminates sex and its color. 

In the painting series, the sex atmosphere vanishes slowly and gradually. In fact, the presentation of a lone penis in one picture can hardly help thoroughly dispel the sex atmosphere. In the initial narrative scene, the stark penis as such is no doubt shown as an image of sex. Under the circumstances, the penis once located in the narrative background would be immediately associated with a soul-stirring story. As soon as the penis serves as a crucial impetus to the narrative, the viewer at once holds high expectations, an expectation of a climax related to sex, or an expectation of a passionate drama. However, under Xiao Yu’s brush the penis is separated from sex act contrary to all expectations. Xiao Yu’s narrative is a reverse one since he does not expose how sex little by little reaches the climax as the viewer expected but allow it to retreat step by step against all expectations, that is to say, the reproductive organ is more and more passive instead of active. This is an anti-narrative and in this sense it can be called new narrative. The relation among scissors, hands and penis exhibits a dynamic process similar to the slow motions projected one by one in a film. The narrative rhythm is identical to the one of excision considering excision as such is a sort of movement with narrative pause and transition. In the sense, excision possesses several strata of significance, that is to say, it is an operation both on the foreskin and on the picture and meanwhile such excising action takes effect on sex signification. Nevertheless, excision here is constructive in the meantime. To cut off the sex signification space exactly contributes to the construction of a medical signification space. More precisely, to cut off the outer skin just results in constructing an inner noumenon as stripping on this condition means production instead of diminishment. It seems certain that excision/ stripping have been employed for the sake of construction/presence, or in other words, construction has been realized by means of excision/ stripping. In this way, we have viewed how time, narrative and rhythm are necessarily composed, how an excised sex organ is transformed into a nonsexual one, how the division of picture area reorganizes the tableau, and by the way, how a private medical operation is performed.

Right here we have caught the significance of the painting series. And right here through the desexualized process of a sex organ, we have found that a reproductive organ can be returned to a pure body organ even though under given conditions. In that case, we have every reason to ask why such a pure body organ has been regarded as a sex organ all the time, or why a pure reproductive organ has born so many cultural and moral meanings, why the reproductive organ has necessarily been a focus, a taboo and privacy, and why it has never stopped to act as the hero of moral and cultural wars. Now that these paintings imply that it can radically cast away its cultural and sex signification, it is doubtless that today’s imagined sex signification of reproductive organ is purely man-made construction. Initially it is probably nothing special, neither a focus nor something worthy tightly wrapped. The fact that it has been mystified, worshiped or condemned as verified by numerous castration cases does lay bare the man-made historical course of mystifying the reproductive organ. This is evidently a cultural course rather than a natural result. At the end, I would like to stress the work’s mock at the cultural construction of sex signification and its sense of humor in treating the privacy of penis. The solemnity of reproductive organ, expressed in adoring way or in evil method, is treated here in parody. It is mercilessly and thoroughly exposed and maltreated by scissors and gloves beneath its dignity. Nevertheless, it is most willing to stand such ill treatment since it believes that it can enjoy a more wonderful and happy life only by maltreating, exposing and divorcing itself from the sex context for the moment. 

Translated by Cao Leiyu