With the arrival of the Jiachen year, the famous painter Huang Azhong, who belongs to the dragon, also ushered in his sixth natal year.
Painting will fly with thoughts, it will have power, and it will fly higher and farther. "As a famous painter in Shanghai, Huang Azhong will always bring unexpected artistic enjoyment. He is a senior professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, and has served as the director of the Oil Painting Art Committee of the Shanghai Artists Association for many years, and is also a librarian of the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History. His oil paintings have a great influence in Shanghai and even in the whole country, and as early as 1979, he was included in the "Twelve Artists Painting Exhibition", which is recorded in the history of Chinese contemporary art. Decades have passed, and he has become more and more profound in the study of oil paintings, still lifes, landscapes and other subjects, making good use of color, pursuing poetry, creating a unique style and personal painting language, and forming a strong personal outlook. In addition to oil paintings, Huang Azhong's oil paintings on paper, Chinese landscapes, flower sketches, and porcelain paintings are also remarkable and unique, especially the long bake he inscribed on Chinese painting works with calligraphy full of "painting", which ...... read carefullyHe has dabbled in all kinds of art styles, and he has fun and easy play.
Above: A close-up of Huang Azhong.
In addition to the brush, Huang Azhong's other pen is writing, he wrote "Ah Zhong's Essays" published two books, as well as "Youyou Siyu", a piece of prose, written smoothly and soothingly, full of rhythm and spirituality. In recent years, he has also begun to be obsessed with the creation of prose poems, and has also achieved good results. In addition, his Go skills are among the best in the painting circle. Over the past decades, he has wandered in studios and podiums, wandering in the East and West, and is proficient in Chinese painting, oil painting and ......He has always watched leisurely and stoically, concentrating on painting his favorite subjects, confidently and calmly, weaving his own dreams. His oil painting creation does not pay attention to materialized images, but starts from the oriental way of thinking, and projects the universe with Zen meaning into the picture, telling the deep emotion under the interweaving of ** strips and colors. From the standpoint of the humanistic spirit, he cares for the world, excavates different beauty, and shows it to the viewer. Based on this, he also drew nourishment from Chinese culture, reaching out to art forms such as ink, porcelain, calligraphy, oil painting on paper, prose and poetry, and gradually growing into a big tree. It left a unique and personalized aesthetic for the times. In Huang Azhong's view, the integration of Chinese and Western has never been a simple superimposed combination, but the natural understanding and the times of "foreign teachers create and get the source of the heart".
The pursuit of "freehand".
Huang Azhong, whose ancestral home is Chongming, Shanghai, was born in 1952 into a family of craftsmen. Taking advantage of the spring breeze of the era of the resumption of the national college entrance examination, Huang Azhong finally had the opportunity to realize his dream and was admitted to the Department of Stage Art of Shanghai Theater Academy to study. In his own words, he belongs to "a road to the black", always adhere to his own artistic ideals, consistently, will not be affected by the environment, will not change due to popularity, and will not cater to the needs of the market.
Above: Watercolor "Yacht".
In the late 70s to mid-80s of the 20th century, Shanghai Theater Academy was a very influential institution for the Shanghai art circles, it has a group of teachers including Min Xiwen, Kong Baiji, Chen Junde, Liao Jiongmo, Fang Shicong and other professors and strong artistic creation force, but also cultivated a group of influential students in Shanghai in the country and even in the world. At that time, the students' color training was unique, and the students' sketches were bright and loud, and the level was neat, and they enjoyed the reputation of "Shangju phenomenon" at that time. Wong Ah Chung immersed himself in such an art school every day, and coupled with his diligence and intelligence, he benefited a lot from his three-year study career and made rapid progress.
Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared. Shortly after graduating from the Department of Stage Art of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Huang Azhong participated in the "Twelve Artists Exhibition" in Shanghai in 1979, half a year before the "Star Art Exhibition" in Beijing. It is worth mentioning that the 12 painters who participated in the exhibition that year were not only the pioneers of the Shanghai art world at that time who had the courage to step out of the forbidden area of creation, but also the spiritual mentors who have continuously benefited Shanghai art to the present in the past 40 years of reform and opening up. After that, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, where he devoted himself to creation while teaching, until the first peak of creation was ushered in in the tenth decade of the last century. In particular, the "Still Life" series has achieved his own painting language and unique style. In these wonderful paintings, the flowers depicted often have no varieties or names, but only vaguely recognizable shapes, outlines, and sometimes a cloud of color or hazy light and shadow. The most special thing is that it is not supported by realistic methods, but is supported together with adjacent color gamuts, shapes, and lines, and creates a gorgeous, quiet, and poetic space through the plane stacking of color blocks.
There is no doubt that this kind of still life works with oriental aesthetic character pursues the combination of Chinese and Western in technique, and pursues the poetic beauty of oriental classicism in spirit, as Huang Azhong himself said: "Still life has always been a subject of oil painting teaching. From the perspective of the history of Western painting, its development can be traced. I was backed by Chinese culture, so I had to look for the context of Chinese flower painting. I found that Chinese painting has a freehand spirit, and in the process of continuous exploration, the pattern, color, content, and spirit of my brushwork have changed. For example, in terms of color, it used to be very unrestrained and exposed, but now it has a different feeling, because Chinese culture pays attention to subtlety, so the painting is a little more restrained, but many of the things that are composed will be strengthened, and there will be many inexplicable things on the picture, which are plausible, but they can make people feel a lot, which is the embodiment of a kind of Eastern philosophy. ”
It can be said that the establishment of Huang Azhong's "freehand" oil painting style began in the mid-90s of the 20th century, and reached maturity and perfection in the early 21st century. The still life paintings represented by the "Vessel on the Table" and the "Still Life Series" reflect the artistic characteristics of his period, and he absorbed the treatment of modeling by Cézanne, Braque, Picasso, Morandi and other art masters, as well as Matisse's subjective use of color, and got rid of the flat division form of early still life paintings, and entered a relatively free creative state. He thinks about the compositional relationship between bottles and cans in the picture, and the combination of two structural degrees of plane and depth; In order to create the overall tone of the picture, the color is subjectively conjured to achieve the desired atmosphere. He is very good at using the same color to depict, and through the coordination of black, white and gray, the picture seems very spiritual. From his oil painting "Still Life Series: Yellow Flower" (which won the Outstanding Works Award at the National Art Exhibition in 1994) to his oil painting "Still Life Series" selected for the 9th National Art Exhibition16 (1999), and then to the work "Still Life Series No.", which was selected for the 3rd China Oil Painting Exhibition38 (2003), his still life paintings are constantly improving themselves and maturing in style.
After the "Still Life Series", Huang Azhong began to turn to the expression of landscape subjects, and entered a new stage of oil painting creation. It is not difficult for a careful viewer to find that, despite the different themes of expression, his pursuit of landscape painting is actually the same as that of still life painting, except that the relationship between vessels is transformed into the relationship between buildings. In the same way as the ancient sages proposed the "Lying in the Mountains and Rivers", Huang Azhong advocated in the creation of landscape painting to emphasize feelings, painting the scenery left in the heart, rather than the scenery seen in the eyes, and pursuing a kind of "likeness" in the feeling and "likeness" in the mind, rather than copying the real scenery in reality. In Huang Azhong's view, there is a distance between "heart" and "eyes", the scenery in the eyes is far away, if the heart is not reached, it will be blocked, although the scenery in the heart is close at hand, only because of the perception and far.
Oil painting pays attention to the expression of blocks and colors, but it is not difficult for those who are familiar with Huang Azhong's landscape paintings to find that in many of his sketches, the expression of lines is very emphasized, whether it is to depict the field scenery of his hometown Chongming, or to express the exotic customs of European towns, the lyrical expression of lines combined with strong contrasting colors produces a new artistic effect. It can be said that Huang Azhong has entered a free state of coming and going in the creation of landscape paintings, and the forms and styles are very diverse. In particular, some small-scale oil pastel works are painted with a large freehand technique, these small paintings seem to be sketches of the scene, but in essence, the painter has entered a creative state of freedom and forgetfulness, although there are only a few brushstrokes in the painting, but it is colorful and charming. This kind of spontaneous work is not a record of the scenery in the eyes, but the beating of the heart on the paper. People who have seen these small paintings are all shocked, because they see another side of Huang Azhong's paintings: the uninhibited and colorful side. As Chu Guorong commented: "These landscape paintings quietly heralded the beginning of a new stage in Ah Zhong's oil painting art: a sensual stage that emphasized the expression of feelings." ”
As a unique artist, Huang Azhong's oil paintings advocate freehand expression, exuding a strong poetic sense of traditional Chinese literati painting. This stems from his own familiarity and comprehension of classical Chinese culture, which has promoted his ability to more accurately grasp the pulse of "imagery" and "freehand" in the creation of oil paintings, and can freely volatilize freely in the comprehensive grasp of Chinese and Western art elements. His oil paintings can be regarded as outstanding representatives of contemporary Chinese "image oil painting", which has brought a breath of fresh air to the development of the value system of Chinese oil painting art.
Look for "poetic".
Above: Oil painting "City Weather".
Over the past decades, as a devout artist, Huang Azhong has been diligently pursuing the road of painting and never slacking off: he has not only conducted in-depth research on oil paintings, still lifes, landscapes, etc., but also created a unique style and personal painting language, and formed a highly recognizable visual appearance; At the same time, he studied Chinese painting across borders, and also made considerable achievements in the practice of lotus, landscape and other themes. If his oil paintings are narrative, real, and material, the corners and corners of the picture are full of enthusiasm for "telling some stories". In recent years, the creation of Chinese painting that he has explored is lyrical, virtual, and spiritual.
As early as 1989, Huang Azhong's work "Morning Mist" selected for the 7th National Art Exhibition is a Chinese painting lotus. Of course, this is not a traditional form of lotus flowers, but a modern Chinese painting that highlights the splashing and permeability of the ink, and at the same time shows the structure and block surface. As Shang Hui commented: "This Chinese painting, which was selected for the National Art Exhibition, not only reflects the urgency of the art world at that time to promote the transformation of Chinese painting into modernity, but also reflects Huang Azhong's active attempt to transfer his pursuit of modern visual structure to Chinese painting." Like his oil paintings, which explores the relationship between space and plane, his lotus leaves are not simply divided into planes, but create a very intriguing shallow space through dense ink, which stands out among many Chinese paintings. Of course, his understanding of the spirituality of ink painting and brush and ink also shows something extraordinary, with an elegant and mysterious style. ”
Since "Morning Mist", Huang Azhong's expression of Chinese painting has never stopped. Lotus flowers are still a favorite subject for him to express, and he weaves the dense and soft ink into a vertical and horizontal spatial structure, thus forming a new visual experience. His paintings of the Bund series or Jiangnan Pink Walls and Tiles also follow his sensitivity to the internal structure of objects, and give them a simple, holistic and bright modern visual schema. At the same time, he repeatedly studied, pondered and comprehended the brushwork and ink of Dong Qichang, Shi Tao and Bada Shanren, seeking the strength and strength of his brushwork, so as to inject the meaning and realm of traditional brushwork into his simple overall structural schema.
If the collision between the characteristics of different media tools creates objective conditions for painters to explore artistic breakthroughs, then the conscious attempt of multiple media tools is a manifestation of the painter's active exploration. Because of this, Huang Azhong's exploration of ink painting appears sincere and calm, becoming a "vast world without constraints". In his Chinese paintings, you can see not only the expression of ink and water, the hearty brushwork and the vitality, but also the modern composition and color expression. When the concept of composition is integrated into the traditional rules of Chinese painting, the "image" of Chinese painting will change and create new ideas. Another example is the artistic treatment of lotus flowers, water towns and other themes with a sense of form, the overall arrangement of black, white and gray in the picture, the capture and use of color, etc., are also influenced by Western painting, and reflect the effect of traditional Chinese painting "ink and color".
Huang Azhong very much admires Shi Tao's "brush and ink should be with the times", his understanding of the Chinese painting tradition is to run through Chinese culture and brush and ink, then the painter's brush and ink has meaning, fun, style, spirit, if there is also the integration of Western culture, aesthetic concepts, and formal processing, then the extension of the Chinese painting tradition will gradually expand, but this requires the painter to continue to research and explore, raise the temperature of the "melting pot", and then dissolve all foreign things. This so-called "temperature" of oneself is also "culture" and "cultivation".
Above: Oil painting "Red Roof".
Although there are different types of paintings and different forms of expression, Chinese and Western art are borrowed from each other. In a sense, oil painters have opened up the new side of modern ink painting, and from the perspective of historical development, the state of oil painters has expanded the extension of modern ink painting with the ink language they created. For Huang Azhong's Chinese paintings, Mao Shi'an once made a summary, one is human nature. Whether painting lotus flowers, painting Jiangnan or painting landscapes, it is by no means a disease-free moan, but an expression of the painter's humanistic care for nature. The second is poetry. He wrote Chinese paintings as poems. Therefore, each work can give birth to poetry and poetry, and it is a poetic realm from the unity of nature and man from the Chinese cultural tradition. The third is spirituality. Huang Azhong's Chinese painting is very ethereal, lifting weights as if it is light, taking the ancient people and expressing his heart, quite a sense of "no trick to win", which makes people happy. In this regard, Huang Azhong said frankly: "What I want to express through ink painting is only a state of mind, and the lotus flowers, green leaves, vine branches, boats and flowing water in the water town, and the distant mountains in the empty sky have become a kind of borrowing, and these borrowed objects constitute a meaningful form between the regular and the irregular, in the combination of the similar and the dissimilar." They are lotus, but they are not lotus, they are bridges, but they are not bridges, they do not have the specific name of lotus; They do not indicate that the bridge was sketched in **, but only leave the symbolism with the dream, with the wind drifting thousands of miles. The intersection and derivation of the color blocks of the West and the brushstrokes of the East are a kind of freehand of the soul and a form of sustenance here. ”
In connection with the "freehand" pursued in the creation of oil painting, in the creation of Chinese painting, Huang Azhong pursues the beauty of "poetry" displayed by the language of brush and ink. In his view, the "poetry" in Chinese culture contains a large volume of aesthetics. In addition to the beauty of the poems themselves, they also expand the connotation of Chinese freehand oil painting. China is a country of poetry, and the deep-rooted Chinese poetic culture has given it an "artistic conception", "realm" and "atmosphere", which is in line with Chinese culture. The ancients often said that "there are paintings in poems, and there are poems in paintings", and the so-called poems in paintings are the freehand essence of "poetry" expressed in pen songs, ink and dances.
Explorers who connect China and the West
The integration of China and the West is undoubtedly the main proposition of the reform and development of Chinese art since the 20th century, whether it is the use of Western realistic painting to improve Chinese painting, or the use of Western modernism to counterpoint Chinese freehand methods, or the use of Chinese imagery to explore the Chinese style of oil painting, these three ways together constitute the basic mode of the spread of Western painting in China since the 20th century and the relationship between Chinese painting. From this point of view, Huang Azhong is an explorer who has grown up in the new era and strives to connect China and the West in an open context.
In recent years, Huang Azhong has focused on the connection between oil painting and Chinese painting, and has made valuable explorations. It is never easy to integrate China and the West, and their differences in materials, media, intervention methods, visual identification, etc., are destined to be difficult to explore. Seeking common ground in differences, finding the fit and commonality in differences, and requiring high artistic talent and the courage to constantly break through. It can be said that Huang Azhong's exploration here is successful, he has found the connection point between Chinese and Western art from the perspectives of spirit, charm, meaning, composition, rhythm, etc., and has integrated foreign paintings with local culture, thus creating a unique way and forming his personal artistic style.
Above: The Chinese painting "Tranquility".
In Shang Hui's view, "Eastern rhyme and Western language" may be summarized as the overall characteristics of Huang Azhong's artistic creation. The so-called Spanish language refers to his profound insight into the pictorial elements of Western modern painting, such as shape, space, tone and structure, and the most fascinating thing about his oil painting and ink painting is often not the figurative depiction, but the revelation of the mysterious structure and tonal relationship hidden behind the objects. The so-called oriental rhyme is that he does not stop at structural analysis and tonal variation, but uses imagery to dominate these analytical modern visual schemas, and uses them to create artistic conception and show the spirit of poetry and freehand. The imagery structure is the soul that passes through Huang Azhong's Chinese and Western paintings and forms his artistic personality in Eastern rhyme and Western language.
On this artistic path of "combining East and West", Huang Azhong is firm and full of confidence. Both Chinese and Western paintings have different expressions and means, and perhaps they are also the various qualities pursued by painting. As far as painting is concerned, simplicity and complexity, freehand and realism, expression and regeneration, nature and form, etc., are all concepts that painters choose to pursue. Simplicity is less, what is done is subtraction, reducing the natural scenery and reducing it again, reducing it to the point that it can no longer be reduced. As Song Yu, a writer of resignation, said in "The Lustful Fu of Deng's Disciples", "If you increase one point, it will be too long, and if you subtract one point, it will be too short." Complexity is addition, constantly adding, adding one stroke at a time, if it is impermeable, it is opposite to sparse; Freehand is to express your feelings about all things, which is a kind of meaning, a kind of situation. The photo is real, but it needs your sincerity, sincerity, and true feelings; The expression must be in the creation, free from nature, and the passion of the heart is out of the structure of reorganization. Regeneration comes from nature, that is, giving new life to nature; Nature is not static, but the weather is myriad, and the form is constantly adjusting and constructing, changing nature.
In Huang Azhong's eyes, the West is the art of the sun, so he advocates brightness and pursues enthusiasm. However, not all of them are sonorous, or gray and miscellaneous, and the mood is clear; The east is the art of the moon, so the wind roars in the valley, and the water is clear. However, there are also those who look up at the universe and sing to the east. Therefore, in terms of painting creation, whether it is Chinese or Western, open-mindedness comes first. The heart is right-minded, but the evil spirit does not enter; If you are broad-minded, you will be broad-minded; open-minded, so bright and bright; Be open-minded and open all the ways to the realm.
Entering a new natal year, Huang Azhong, who is past his prime, does not feel that "old age is coming" at all, and is still full of pride and confidence, as always, exploring more possibilities of oil painting and Chinese painting art. "In the decades I have been painting, I have often heard the saying that painting cannot form a shell, which means being a cocoon, restraining oneself, and holding oneself to the point of not creating. This is very true, but many people in the painting world are also self-bound, and then gradually decline. So I kept pulling the filament, and then unraveling the filament, so that I was always breathable; Then they went out in all directions, firing a shot to change places, rampage, constantly breaking through the fortress and occupying the high ground. Then I heard the saying that a painter should concentrate at a certain stage, form a style, and become a symbol. This is also the case, looking at the history of painting to establish a school, the formation of a symbol is the same, but it seems that there are also drawbacks, the style has been determined, constantly repeated, is it powerless to expand, or stick to their own stereotypes? Facing the future, Huang Azhong is full of confidence: "I will continue to paint, and draw the ideas that have been circling in my mind; I will also continue to write, writing down my feelings and feelings. For the future, I feel that there are many possibilities for development. This natal year, I am looking forward to myself! ”
*: Xinmin Weekly reporter Wang Yueyang).
Artist Profile
Huang Azhong,Born in Shanghai in 1952, graduated from the Shanghai Theater Academy, he is currently a member of the Chinese Artists Association, a member of the China Oil Painting Society, a librarian of the Shanghai Research Institute of Culture and History, the former director of the Oil Painting Art Committee of the Shanghai Artists Association, a member of the Shanghai Writers Association, the chairman of the Shanghai Changning District Artists Association, the chairman of the Shanghai Chongming District Artists Association, and a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University.