The Paper learned that Mr. Shui Tianzhong, an art historian, art theorist, and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Arts, died of illness at 2:30 a.m. on December 24, 2023, at the age of 89. A number of scholars in the art world told The Paper that Mr. Shui Tianzhong is an art historian with a backbone, knowledge and position, and a very good attitude towards academics.
Shui Tianzhong was interviewed by The Paper in Shanghai many years ago, and said: "Art is beyond utilitarianism. The boundaries of art can be crossed and permeated, but they cannot be canceled. (See further reading for the conversation section).
Mr. Shui Tianzhong (1935-2023).
Shui Tianzhong was born in Lanzhou, Gansu Province in 1935. He is currently the vice president of the Institute of Art History of the China National Academy of Painting and a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Arts. Since 1981, he has been engaged in the research of Chinese modern art history and contemporary painting criticism at the Institute of Fine Arts of the Chinese Academy of Arts. He used to be the director of the Institute of Fine Arts of the Chinese Academy of Arts, the editor-in-chief of "China Art News" and "Art History", the deputy director of the Theory Committee of the Chinese Artists Association, the executive director of the China Oil Painting Society, and the member of the National Cultural Relics Appraisal Committee.
He graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Northwest Academy of Arts in Xi'an in 1955 and went to the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Arts in 1979 to study Chinese art history. He is the author of "Commentary on Modern Chinese Painting", "Commentary on Chinese Modern Art", "Through the Four Seasons", "Selected Works of Chinese Art in the 20th Century" (co-edited with Lang Shaojun), "History, Art and People", "Chinese Oil Painting in the 20th Century" (Volume 1), "Li Gonglin and His Times", "A Brief History of Chinese Oil Painting", "Review of the Debate on the Innovation of Chinese Painting", etc. He has presided over and participated in the review of exhibitions such as the Annual Exhibition of Chinese Oil Painting, the Annual Nomination Exhibition of Art Critics, the Exhibition of Chinese Landscape Painting and Oil Painting Landscape, the Exhibition of 20th Century Chinese Oil Painting, and the "Gate of the Century" Modern Art Exhibition. He has presided over many academic seminars, such as the Annual Conference of the Institute of Fine Arts of the Chinese Academy of Arts, the National Symposium on Art Theory, the Lin Fengmian Art Seminar, and the Seminar on Art Creation Theory in the New Era. Awarded the special allowance for experts with outstanding contributions".
In 1998, the China Academy of Art held an academic symposium on "Chinese Art Education in the Twentieth Century" to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the institute, and Shui Tianzhong published a long article entitled "The Historical Fate of the Painter Cluster of the National Academy of Art", which told the fate of the young artists and painters who returned to China such as Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzheng, Wu Dayu, and Fang Ganmin.
*Wang Huangsheng, professor of the Academy of Fine Arts and chief director of the Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, told The Paper today that Mr. Shui is a teacher with style, knowledge and position. "Mr. Shui has a very strong attitude towards art and social issues, and towards people, and he also has a very good attitude towards academics. As historians and critics, there are very few people with backbone. My deepest feeling is that one year I went to Singapore with Mr. Shui, and was invited to participate in the awards, and there was an institution that collected Xu Beihong's works, and invited us to look at the works, only showing **, Mr. Shui insisted that the original work should be taken out to comment. But the other party didn't take it out for a long time, and Mr. Shui was dissatisfied, so he turned around and left. Wang Huangsheng believes that "Mr. Shui is very knowledgeable in his judgment of academic issues, ink and wash issues, and modern art history, and can summarize and sort out scattered academic issues and grasp the key points, and is a senior worthy of respect and learning." ”
The demeanor of a scholar, the style of a literati, and the demeanor of a gentleman are the deepest impressions left by Mr. Shui Tianzhong, and they are also a precious example of our generation's learning. The gentleman is gone, but the spirit lives on!Jiang Mei, president of the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, and art critic Li Xu and his wife told The Paper.
He has the temperament of a traditional literati, has the stance of an intellectual, and likes to tell the truth among the art theorists of the older generation, and compared with other art critics or theorists who are closely related to the power of capital, his nobility and preciousness lie here. An art critic said.
Mr. Shui Tianzhong.
When he was nearly half a hundred years old, he resolutely turned to the study of contemporary art history, observing, feeling, thinking, and judging in the creation of art day by day. He advocated 'thoughtful scholarship' and 'in-depth popularity', always expounded in an open historical situation, and thought about problems from the standpoint of intellectuals, 'wanting to add something new to the long river of art, so that he could continue to move forward on the basis of the ancients'. In the article "Water in the Sky: Integrating China and the West, Drawing from the Past and Bringing Out the New" published in 2022, Guangming ** recorded that he is a scholar with a strong sense of social participation, and he attaches great importance to the actual living conditions of artistic individuals, and is full of his true feelings and deep insights in his evaluation of Lin Wenzheng, Wei Tianlin, Guan Liang, Qiu Di, Zhou Bichu, Sha Qi and others. After entering the 21st century, Shui Tianzhong presided over or participated in the planning of exhibitions and academic seminars such as the Shanghai Biennale, the 20th Century Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition, the "Gate of the Century" Modern Art Exhibition, and the "Open Era".
He often likes to quote Kant: "Art is beyond utilitarianism." ”
Further reading: Dialogue In the water sky, the boundaries of art can be crossed and infiltrated, but they cannot be canceled.
Surging News reporter Huang Song.
In 2018, Shui Tianzhong, a well-known art historian and art critic, walked into the "Shangmei Lecture Hall" of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts to tell the teachers and students of the Academy of Fine Arts about the artists in the great turning point of history. After the opening of the "Shangmei Lecture Hall", Mr. Shui accepted the "The Paper Art Review" (www.).He said, "Eclecticism is conducive to artistic innovation, and sticking to the program is conducive to preserving the "quintessence of the country", and my opinion is that this kind of boundary should be permeable and crossable. But the complete abolition of borders would make Chinese painting lose its artistic specificity. ”
Painting is not the death of style, but the transfer of traditional mission.
The Paper: Now that the entire art world is under the strong impact of contemporary art, the West proposes that "painting is dead", is easel painting on the verge of death?If not, in what direction?
Shui Tianzhong: This question has been asked many times in the Western art world, and although the question was raised very early, it has not been convincing in all aspects, and there are still various answers to this day.
At the first Beijing Biennale in 2003, foreign artists also raised this question, "The Beijing Biennale has set a policy of traditional easel painting and sculpture as the main body, which is obviously different from the development of world art trends”
As I understand it, the death of painting was raised long after the birth of photography. The ancients said that "you are not good at painting to save the form", and now a mobile phone can save the "shape" at any time. It can be said that the mission of painting to "preserve form" has ended, and painting has been transformed into a way to convey the emotion of the soul and the individuality. An analogy can be made that ancient painters are equivalent to today's painters, photographers and scribes, who recorded a person, an event, and a historical scene through paintings. I feel that it is not the death of painting, but the end of the traditional mission of painting. Painting no longer fully fulfills the mission of recording, it no longer has to pay all kinds of costs and have all kinds of means to accomplish this mission.
For example, many people now criticize Xu Beihong's "sketch is the foundation of plastic arts", thinking that it is outdated. However, if you paint a picture of historical events, historical figures, and specific scenes, you still need to sketch the basics of modeling. Nowadays, some paintings really don't require much sketching and modeling foundation. Painting's mission in this regard has come to an end, but painting itself has not died. This is still the case all over the world, and there is a resurgence of interest in easel painting around the world, not only in the art world, but also in the general audience, which is worth playing, tasting, and paying attention to.
Works by David Hockney ipad.
The Paper: Nowadays, conceptual art has also influenced college education, do you think that college education should be biased towards concepts?Because some people have pointed out that the current college education is cultivated according to "craftsmen", but artistic creation needs the addition of "thoughts", how to solve the contradiction between them?
Shui Tianzhong: I graduated from school in the mid-1950s, I can't think through this problem myself, it seems difficult to have a way to take care of everything, so that students can not only obtain solid technology, but also have the ability to create freely, and the current art academies are different from before the 1990s, in the past, the main body of the Academy of Fine Arts was the national oil engraving, after the 1950s, the first New Year paintings, propaganda posters, now the main body of the Academy of Fine Arts is not pure art, gradually design, digital has become the main body, and the society does need design, Digital talent. Therefore, I think different majors should have different configurations of basic courses. Of course, no matter what industry you are in, it is better to have a rich cultural accomplishment than nothing. For example, if you are engaged in environmental art design, if you have traditional Chinese poetry and literary attainments, you will have different design effects.
As for whether to add the foundation of social sciences and philosophy in art schools, I think this question can be more encouraged and cultivated at the primary and secondary school level, because Chinese students have always been very good at pure technical training, and Chinese students need to strengthen their broader, broader and deeper independent thinking.
Sharing the Future: Open and Diversified Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts Digital Art Course Exploration and Exchange Exhibition".
The Paper: At present, artists have many opportunities to participate in the creation of thematic and historical scenes while completing their own paintings, and many artists in the past can see their flexible transformation in self-creation and thematic creation, such as Wu Hufan, who also painted the atomic bomb**;There are also people who can both stand and install, is it possible for the current artists to take care of more than one of them?
Shui Tianzhong: The creation of historical scenes in China is missing, not missing now, it is rare since the Ming and Qing dynasties, and in the face of the historical creations left by the past dynasties in Western museums, we need to make up for the lessons of historical creation. For example, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, a farmer in a small village in Anhui Province proposed an agreement to divide the land among his households. This is a state of secrecy, there is no electricity, there is no **, there is no **, according to the memories of the people at the time and the existing information such as the house that can be seen now, which requires the traditional means of "reproduction". It should be said that the creation of historical themes not only has the value of art, but also the value of historical observation.
I think every artist should have a few thoughts, one is how well they adapt to the changes and changes of the environment of the times, as well as their personal choices. Artists can follow the times completely, or they can have reservations. Again, you should have a choice of art trends, and you don't need to follow every trend, you need to have your own judgment.
Third, when making these choices and trade-offs, you should have a sober and objective estimate of your own character, temperament, knowledge structure, and what you might do for yourself. An old painter talked about his deviation in realistic painting, which is the so-called "must not do it, but it cannot be". Of course, there are all-rounders, geniuses, paintings, performances, installations, and digital can all get ahead, but there are very few such artists after all.
I think that you can start from your personality, temperament, education, and knowledge structure to find an artistic path that suits you.
Nationalization of oil painting and localization of Chinese painting.
The Paper: Although oil painting comes from Europe, it can be said that it has taken root in China, and Chinese artists continue to carry out localized practice, what process do you think the development of modern Chinese oil painting has gone through?
Some people think that there is the word "oil painting" in the classics before the Qin and Han dynasties, but in fact, the "oil painting" in ancient Chinese books is "paint painting" according to the current saying, it is not a work of art, nor is it a way of painting, but a kind of technology. "Oil painting" as a form of painting began in China after the Ming and Qing dynasties, and when oil painting first entered China, Chinese learned the methods of Europeans to paint and then sell to foreigners. This gave rise to the "** painting". These ** paintings, mainly from Guangzhou, are full of Chinese taste and flavor, and are considered Chinese oil paintings by Westerners, and Westerners also understand the appearance, clothing and customs of Chinese through these oil paintings, and the ** paintings exported are also considered to be "Chinese oil paintings".
However, the "sinicization of oil painting" was really put forward as an academic topic after the first batch of Chinese students returned to China. They introduced the complete Western oil painting (including teaching mode, painting techniques, artistic concepts, and styles) to China, and people began to have questions. This painting came from France and Italy, but as a Chinese, should it be different from Western painting, otherwise just look at Western paintings. Especially after the May Fourth Movement, the concept of the nation-state emerged, and at that time, Chinese music (silk and bamboo), traditional Chinese medicine (traditional Chinese medicine), and national art (martial arts) were proposed, and the corresponding classification of Chinese and Western paintings also appeared. How did "Western Painting" become Chinese?How to convey the joys and sorrows of the old folks, as well as the history and future of the nation?With these questions in mind, Chinese oil painting began its own exploration. By the 40s of the 20th century, due to the war, on the one hand, the exchange of art with foreign countries tended to stagnate, and on the other hand, the painter experienced first-hand the living conditions of ordinary people on the vast land. On the other hand, with the rapid development of the world art trend, Chinese oil painters have also put forward new issues that Chinese painting art should merge with world painting art. Of course, whether it is an exploration of Chinese native art or a convergence with world art, the background of both formulations is the recognition of the characteristics of Chinese painting as a nation.
In recent decades, due to the national concept with Chinese characteristics, a new content has been added to the Chineseness (national character) of art, the mainstream art form, which instills and integrates the issues of national concern into modern art. Therefore, whether from the perspective of art ontology or the relationship between art and the social environment, it is inevitable to pay attention to the Chineseness (nationality) of oil painting, but the premise is that each artist can have a different way of solving it.
Sanyu, cat in chair (left), Peking dog in chair (right), 1930s.
The Paper: Do you think Chinese oil painting and Western oil painting traditions have been separated?
Shui Tianzhong: I think from the perspective of art history, there are points of convergence and similarities. The beginning of human painting art, its most basic part, is to record people's reality and their living conditions in a visual form. And at the final and highest level, it is to express a certain kind of mind, spiritual realm, or their imagination and pursuit, both of which are the same in both Eastern and Western paintings.
In addition, China has at least 2,000 years of culture and painting traditions, and painters will unconsciously infiltrate our cultural traditions into the creation of paintings, and many painters have confirmed this. At the beginning of their creation or in the process of creation, they did not deliberately pursue Chinese taste and Chinese spirit, but there are still in the works of the guest. Even those painters who have left their homeland, such as Zhu Yuanzhi ......His art was largely uninfluenced by traditional Chinese painting, but he left Guangdong to develop across the ocean, and his works have always been permeated with Chinese sensibilities and symbols. There is also a female painter Pan Yuliang, she is different from other painters studying abroad, other painters have a considerable foundation in Chinese art before contacting Western art, but Pan Yuliang does not, due to her special life experience, in terms of traditional Chinese culture is basically in a blank state, but those paintings in her later years still make people feel that it is painted by Chinese, is full of Chinese feelings. Therefore, the pursuit of "Chinese characteristics" is not entirely a rational and academic perspective that can be answered and solved, which seems to be brought about by cultural genes. Although some people may not have studied Chinese painting, they have learned calligraphy, or like China**, or have been influenced by Chinese poetry, Chinese sentiment is deeply rooted in the bone marrow, and will be inadvertently revealed in the creation of paintings.
Of course, after the 1950s, people pursued rationality and proposed the "sinicization of oil painting", including Dong Xiwen, who had put forward it, but it was still everyone who took a different path, although it was such a big goal, and everyone solved or applied this ultimate goal in a different way.
Zhu Yuanzhi, "* Park".
The Paper: In contrast to oil painting, Chinese painting is unique in the history of world art with its special way of observation and expression, and has influenced Eastern art and even Western abstract painting. However, almost at the same time as oil painting came to China, Chinese painting was also more or less influenced by the West, and the "85 New Wave" and the introduction of contemporary art brought about a change in the concept of Chinese painting
Shui Tianzhong: Western art is limited to the influence of Chinese art, in certain eras, certain people, and certain situations. For example, in Abstract Expressionism, there are some painters who have studied or observed Chinese calligraphy or painting, but there are many more painters who do not understand Chinese painting and do not think of getting close to Chinese painting, so we say that the influence of Chinese painting is limited and different.
In the past two hundred years, China has continuously absorbed Western culture, but the absorption of Western painting is only a feather, and more importantly, we have absorbed Western ways of thinking (political concepts, social systems, language expressions, etc.).
Regarding the changes in Chinese painting, I wrote a short article in the 80s, proposing that Chinese painting should have its own boundaries. But this is a dilemma, eclecticism is conducive to artistic innovation, sticking to the program is conducive to the preservation of the "quintessence of the country", my view is that this kind of boundary should be permeable and crossable. But the complete abolition of borders would make Chinese painting lose its artistic specificity.
The Paper: At present, there are several general directions of Chinese painting, some of which are mainly used in retro copying of ancient classic paintings, some of which are ink figure creation under the tradition of the academy, and some of which are art that connects with Western art concepts and uses the form and material of Chinese painting as a concept. Is your view of these changes in Chinese painting a deviation from the tradition of Chinese painting?
Water Heaven: This change contains a variety of factors, but the bigger factor is the change of the entire era. As I have written in a previous article, it is unrealistic to demand that Chinese painting has no traces of the West in all walks of life, in all aspects, and at all levels of society, and that it is unrealistic to demand that Chinese painting has no traces of the West. Our thinking methods and language expressions have been foreignized (some linguists have made statistics, saying that if modern Chinese eliminate all foreign words and foreign concepts in the Chinese Chinese language, especially words from Japan, now Chinese will have no way to communicate and no way to think), so change is not a matter of whether it can be chosen or not, and it has changed imperceptibly.
In such an environment, it is often only a good wish to maintain a pure, undistorted Chinese tradition. For example, in the restoration of the Tang and Song dynasties, even if there are unearthed musical scores, they may not be the original after "deciphering".
The Paper: The 20th century was an "era of change" for China, the so-called "change" is the collision and integration of Eastern and Western cultures, and the advent of the digital age and globalization in the 21st century has brought about global changes
Shui Tianzhong: It is commendable that human culture and science have developed to this stage. But for artists or scholars who work on a certain variety or a certain genre, this obviously creates a new and complicated situation for him. There is a similar situation in history, when a certain profession, or even a certain class, is constantly evolving in the historical field, it is obviously a tragedy. In fact, it also expresses the process of social progress, which is a contradiction. For example, people engaged in ivory carving technology, at present, ivory ** is illegal, which is a tragedy for the craft, but it is progress for the development of mankind.
Wu Daozi sent the picture of the Heavenly King (partial) to be divided into disciplines, and the painting is the decline of the painting Tao.
The Paper: What do you think are the differences and complements between modern college teaching and traditional painting teaching?
Shui Tianzhong: This is a question that many previous artists and educators have repeatedly discussed, of course, the most typical is that the National Art School (now the China Academy of Art) did not advocate the division of painting as represented by Lin Fengmian, and Pan Tianshou represented by Pan Tianshou advocated that painting should be divided into disciplines, not only Chinese painting should be separated from the original painting department, but also in Chinese painting should be divided into landscapes, figures, flowers and birds. The teacher represented by Lin Fengmian believes that painting should not be divided into subjects, as long as it is painting, a variety of part-time or elective courses can be used. As for painting Chinese paintings, there is no need to care about landscapes and figures, and paint everything. In fact, this concept existed in Chinese history, and in the Tang and Song dynasties in China, there was a saying that "the decline of medicine and medicine is divided into different disciplines". Similarly, "painting by discipline is the decline of painting", they advocate that painters should be omnipotent, like Wu Daozi's landscape characters and good at it, and later painters are subdivided into painting feathers, landscapes, and pavilions, which is the decline of painting. Therefore, different schools of thought should be allowed to exist on this issue, which has been debated differently since ancient times.
I haven't been an art educator for a long time, so I don't have a say in it, so it's probably a presumptuous. I think that the traditional "mentoring and apprenticeship" is conducive to the transmission of a technical technique, while comprehensive learning is conducive to cultivating free artistic creativity. That is, if you want to cultivate an artist who has the ability to create freely, I think you should comprehensively let students choose by themselves, and give them the ability to synthesize a variety of knowledge, as well as the possibility and opportunity to master knowledge.
The same is true in the West, in the earliest days of the West, first learned from the master, the master and the apprentice taught each other, and then the first church-run colleges appeared in Italy. At that time, the teaching concept was that simply cultivating painters and painters was not in line with the ideals of social development, and those engaged in religious painting should first have an understanding of the doctrine, should have lofty beliefs and sufficient cultural literacy, otherwise it would be difficult to express and depict the grandeur and sublime in the religious doctrine, so these colleges required students to learn history, poetry, Greek mythology, and religious classics in addition to grinding paints, making canvases, making brushes, and oiling and coloring.
In China, after the reform of the school system at the end of the Qing Dynasty, painting classes were added to school education, which was the most far-reaching step in changing the pattern of Chinese painting. Learning painting was originally to follow the master or go to an art school, but when all primary and secondary schools offered painting classes, this had a great impact on the development of Chinese painting and art education, and the first batch of painting teachers were Japanese teachers, which laid the foundation of modern Chinese art education. Of course, this also contains a major flaw - it did not retain the essence of traditional Chinese painting in the first place. Nowadays, many schools recognize this problem and begin to require Chinese painting majors to take the examination of calligraphy, ancient poetry and seal carving.
Another rare thing about contemporary college education is that it is possible to invite people of the highest level in a field to teach part-time, and I think that if school education is appropriately adjusted, it is completely possible to retain the advantages of mentoring and subsidizing it.
Lin Fengmian, "The Lady with Comb Hair" The Paper: You gave two lectures in the "Shangmei Lecture Hall", talking about the development of Western painting in the early stage of China. What do you think of the teaching method of Shangmei Lecture Hall?
Shui Tianzhong: I think it is a way to mobilize all aspects of teaching to cultivate students under the existing conditions, it is a useful supplement to normal teaching, and it is a very rare and worthy way to promote. Of course, to do so, we need to be academically bold and have certain objective conditions, and we must be able to invite experts from all walks of life in the southeast, north, and west.
Of course, a lecture or a short training course may not be able to teach students everything he has learned, but at least let them know that "there is a sky outside the sky". The so-called art industry has specialization, and talents with different specializations can give students a little bit of inspiration, which is very valuable. This kind of lecture cannot be expected to solve the problems of normal classroom teaching, even if it is a certain artistic tendency, a certain academic spirit, that is a rare experience. I think that when I was a student, I could hear a famous teacher from outside the school tell us, even if it was for half an hour or a class, it would be a very happy thing. In the early 80s, the "Academy of Chinese Culture" in Beijing invited the world's famous scholars to give lectures, and I was fortunate to hear Liang Shuming, Zhang Dainian, Ji Xianlin, Feng Youlan and other figures in cultural history talk about their academic experience, and the impression is still unforgettable.
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