What I write here are musings, but in this case about something truly worth musing over. I recall composition assignments in middle school when I wrote “musings” on this or that topic: they were either baseless concoctions or hypochondriac moans. But this time my “musings” will be different, although genuine feelings will make up only one part of them, while another part may be conjectures under the sway of bookish knowledge. At any rate, these musings are written from the heart, for the simple reason that Xiang Jing’s Otherworld—Will Things Ever Get Better? is a remarkable masterwork, a work worthy of being written into art history. The chance to develop an affinity with this piece is a stroke of good fortune, and to write these musings is a way of involving myself a bit with modern art. Instead of making a few spoken remarks, this needs to be set down carefully in writing, which reminds me of a maxim of Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457): the admirable sacredness of language lies in the irreproducibility of words written on stone or parchment, by a poet or historian or someone unknown, for they express the feelings of a certain soul, in a certain phase of life, at a certain time. They convey the true sacredness of something shared across time and space.
I
There is a cartoon by Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) bearing the caption “Now!” It shows the horse of the “now” charging forward at a gallop, as a warning to people who presume to discuss what art of “now” is.
What I am discussing is precisely an artwork of the here and “now,” but it is not a metaphorical horse. It is simply a horse. It is a fiberglass, color-enameled horse sculpture by the outstanding artist Xiang Jing, bearing the title Otherworld—Will Things Get Better? It is not poised to charge forward, and it doesn’t possess the vaulting mettle of a “stallion with sharp ears bolt-upright.” Instead, it glances back with lowered head and eyes agleam, perhaps with light from the moon or an autumn stream. It prompts us to trace our way back to the bygone time of tradition. According to the dictum