The Processual Nature of Lacquer from the Creator’s Perspective: Process, Tactility, and Relations
By qīqíqǐqì · August, 2025
When people talk about lacquer, they often highlight its sheen and durability. But as a creator, I am more drawn to its processual nature, especially the ways in which it forms relationships through tactility and the body during making.
I particularly enjoy using fabric as the base for lacquer. To me, their combination embodies a fair, even mutually beneficial relationship. The material qualities of fabric and lacquer complete each other, while also continuously shifting under my touch. Kneading, squeezing, twisting, pressing, these gestures shape my tactile experience with lacquer. Unlike the immediacy of vision, tactility requires bodily engagement and time, a process of comparison and sensing. I can directly perceive a causal relation: one thing brings forth another. Tactility is most closely linked with emotion and feeling: when I touch it, I am not only sensing it, but it is also changing because of my touch. It is not merely a passive sensation, but a reciprocal interaction with the world.
This sense is less pronounced when using rigid bases such as wood or metal; in those cases, lacquer functions more like a protective coating, a serving relationship. But with fabric, the bond between base and lacquer carries richer forms of interaction and symbiosis.
In this process, lacquer and fabric do not exist as inert materials, but as manifestations of events and being itself. They record my movements, weight, and touch, extending the experience of the body.
Unlike many materials that tend toward stillness once completed, lacquer possesses a unique vitality. It requires only air and time to cure naturally, no force is needed. Everything follows its own course in an irreversible process. For this reason, even after I cease intervention, it continues to unfold: gravity makes the fabric sag, humidity and temperature alter the pace of curing, and even after it has fully dried, it undergoes months of color opening, gradually becoming more luminous. To understand lacquer’s language, one must not only observe how it is used during making, but also how it lives on after the act of creation ends.
The finished piece, in turn, reveals another paradox. When you touch its surface, it feels warm and smooth, close to the temperature of the body. When you lift it, you are surprised by its lightness. When you look at it, you sense a sedimentation of time. It contains tens of thousands of layers, visible and invisible, of coating, overlay, and polishing. These traces cannot be replicated, nor can they be fully perceived from the finished object. The process is a choreography known only to the creator.
All of this indicates that lacquer is more than just a coating, and it got me thinking: If lacquer itself contains enough vitality, then is the artist building thought upon the material, or does the material already embody thought? Is lacquer essentially physical, as in liquid, flowing, tactile, and weighted, or is it spiritual, carrying concepts, ideas, and emotions? This question reflects broader debates in art history about the nature of materials.
In traditional views of art, materials were often considered lifeless until the artist gave them form and meaning. This perspective emphasises the dominant position of the artist, seeing the artist’s intention and skill as the decisive force, while the material merely submits passively. Michelangelo, for example, believed that sculpture already existed inside the marble, and the artist’s role was simply to release it.
By contrast, more modern and experimental approaches turned directly to the physical qualities of materials, linking more closely with twentieth-century abstract art and installation. This view argues that the artist is not the sole controller of the work, but instead collaborates with the material in the act of creation. The material is not merely a passive medium but is seen as holding an inner potential, capable of developing naturally into the final artwork under certain conditions and environments.
If creation relies only on preconceived ideas, the material is reduced to a container for thought, and its uniqueness and unpredictability are erased. In the context of lacquer, this erasure is especially severe. Lacquer is bound by a whole system of laborious techniques, aesthetic traditions, and historical orthodoxy, to the point where its vitality and tension in contemporary art are almost dissolved. It is disciplined and standardised, making it difficult to be regarded as a living, changing substance.
Art is not only a concept in the mind but a process of constant interaction and adjustment with materials. Contingency and unpredictability are essential sources of creativity.
As Moholy-Nagy emphasised, to master a material does not simply mean technical proficiency, but also recognising and working with its own conditions and forces. Concrete Art further argued that materials should appear as they are, neither concealed nor subdued. Materials carry memory and voice; even when their surfaces are damaged or stripped away, they continue to speak.
When lacquer is overly dependent on so-called tradition, heritage, and technique, has it already lost its potential as an artistic material? Has it been forcibly bound within structures of power and history, left only to repeat orthodox narratives? Has the true voice of the material been silenced?
If we are to truly redefine the starting point of art, we must free materials from assimilation and symbolisation. Lacquer can be flowing, cracked, unstable; it can exist as something waiting to be reactivated. Only when we acknowledge its contingency, fragility, and agency can it once again become a partner in art rather than an object of worship.
Sources & Inspiration
Out of Touch: On the Sensorial in the Historical Interpretation of Japanese Lacquer — Christine M.E. Guth
Documents of Contemporary Art: Materiality — Petra Lange-Berndt (ed.)
Fragility: To Touch and Be Touched — Marlies De Munck & Pascal Gielen
In Praise of Shadows — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
From the Museum of Touch — Susan Stewart
The Memory of Touch — Laura U. Marks
Vietnamese Lacquer Painting: Between Materiality and History — National Gallery Singapore
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创作者视角下大漆的过程性: 过程、触觉与关系
文/漆奇岂器
08/2025
当人们谈论大漆时，往往强调它的光泽与坚固。但作为创作者，我更想从它的过程性谈起。尤其是它在制作中如何通过触觉与身体建立关系。
我最喜欢将布料作为大漆的胎体 。因为在我看来，这两者的结合，是一种很公平甚至互益的关系。布与漆的物质性彼此成就，同时也因为我的触碰而不断发生改变。揉、捏、拧、或是挤压，这些动作构成了我与漆之间的触觉经验。与视觉的瞬时性不同，触觉是一种需要身体参与、耗费时间去比较和感受的过程。我能直观地感受到一种因果关系: 某件事导致了另一件事。触觉与情绪、感受的联系最为紧密：当我触摸它，不仅仅是在感受它，它同时也在因为我的接触而发生改变。它不仅是一种被动的感觉，也是一种与世界的双向交互。
这种感受在以木头、金属等坚硬的胎体上没有这么强烈，在那种情况下，漆更像是附着的保护层，一种服务性关系，而与布料的结合，却让漆与胎体之间包含更多的互动与共生。
因此，在这样的过程里，漆与布并非作为静止的材料存在，而是作为事件与存在本身的体现。它们记录着我的动作、重量与触感，延伸出身体的经验。
与许多在完成后就趋于静止的材料不同，漆自身蕴含着独特的生命性。它只需要空气、时间就可以自然固化，不需要任何暴力，一切都是顺其自然的、也是不可逆转过程。 正因如此，即便我停止干预，它也依然在发生：重力让布料下垂，湿度和温度改变固化的节奏，而在完全干透后，它还会经历数月的开色，颜色逐渐变得鲜亮。所以，要想理解漆的语言，除了看它过程中如何被使用，也要观察在创作结束后它如何“活着” 。
而最终的成品，则揭示了另一重悖论。当手抚摸它的表面时，会感到十分温润，接近身体的温度。当你拿起它，会感到意外地发现它的的轻盈。而当你观察它，则能感受到沉积的时间感。 它包含了数以万计的可见的、不可见的覆盖、叠加与打磨。 这些痕迹不可复现，也无法完全从成品中被感知。 它的过程是一种只有创作者本人知道的编排。
这些都表示漆不只是单纯的涂料那么简单，所以也让我开始思考：如果说漆本身就蕴含丰富的生命力，那么艺术家是在材料之上构建思想，还是材料本身已经蕴含思想？ 漆究竟是物理性的： 液态的、流动的、包含触感、带有重量的，还是精神性的：包含 观念、思想、情感等？ 这一追问也折射了艺术史上对材料的不同看法。
在传统艺术观念中，人们多认为材料是无生命的，直到艺术家赋予其形态与意义。这种观念强调了艺术家的主导地位，认为艺术家的意志和技艺起到决定性因素，材料只是被动的服从。如米开朗基罗认为雕塑已经存在于大理石内部，艺术家只是将其释放出来。
与此相对，更现代、更具实验性的艺术观念，则直接转向了材料的物理属性本身，与20世纪的抽象艺术、装置艺术建立了更为紧密的关联。这一观点主张艺术家并不是完全控制作品的人，而是与材料互动，共同创造出作品。认为材料不仅仅是被动的媒介，而是具有“内在潜力”的，它可以在一定的环境、条件下，自然地发展为最终的艺术作品。
如果创作仅依赖于预设的思想，材料就会被简化为“承载思想的容器”，它的独特性与不可控性将被抹除。而在漆的语境中，这种抹除尤为严重。漆被一整套繁琐的工艺规范、审美传统、历史正统性所绑架，以至于它在当代艺术中的活性与张力几乎被消解。它被规训、被被标准化，很难被真正视为一个具有生命的、存在于变化中物质。
艺术并不仅仅是头脑中的概念，而是与材料持续互动、不断调整的过程。意外性与不可控性是创造力的重要来源。
正如莫霍利-纳吉（Moholy-Nagy）所强调的，“掌握材料”并不仅仅意味着技艺的纯熟，而是对材料自身条件与力量的承认与驾驭。具体艺术进一步提出，材料应当如其所是，不被遮掩、不被驯服。材料本身具有记忆与声音，即便外观被破坏或剥落，它依然在诉说。
当大漆被过度依赖于所谓“传统”、“非遗”、“技艺”时，它是否已经丧失了艺术材料的潜能？它是否被强行束缚在权力与历史的结构中，只能重复正统叙事？真正的材料之声是否已被消音？
如果我们真的要重新定义艺术的起点，就必须让材料摆脱被同化与符号化的命运。漆可以是流动的、龟裂的、不稳定的，可以是一种有待重新激活的存在。只有当我们承认它的偶然性、破损性与能动性时，它才能重新成为艺术的伙伴，而不是被供奉的对象。