Author: Yu Xuhong (Director of the Art Museum of China Academy of Art, Director of the Institute of Art Philosophy and Cultural Innovation).
Lin Fengmian is one of the founders of modern art education in China, and his artistic career can be said to be a microcosm of the development of Chinese art in the 20th century. Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki were his students and practitioners of his artistic concept of "East meets West", and together they became representatives of modern Chinese art. On February 20th, the five-year joint exhibition "The Avenue of Zao Wou-Ki - Zao Wou-Ki's Centennial Retrospective Exhibition" has just ended, which is the largest retrospective of Zao Wou-Ki in Asia held in China so far. At the same time, the China Art Museum launched the "Chinese Landscape - Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong Art Exhibition". The exhibition of the three masters echoing each other is like an epic artistic dialogue in the early spring of Jiachen.
Golden Autumn (Chinese Painting) Lin Fengmian.
Holding the White Lotus and the Lady in Red (Chinese Painting) Lin Fengmian.
Autumn Heron (Part 1) (Chinese painting) Lin Fengmian.
My Father's Garden (oil painting) Zao Wou-Ki.
My home in Hangzhou (oil painting) Zao Wou-Ki.
Lion Forest (Chinese painting) Wu Guanzhong.
Harbor Dawn (Chinese painting) Wu Guanzhong.
Lu Xun's hometown (oil painting) Wu Guanzhong.
The original intention of the art of integrating East and West.
Since the 20th century, in the face of the strong influence of foreign culture, what kind of stance and attitude should Chinese artists take? Lin Fengmian, Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki all studied in France and received an education in Western modern art, and when dealing with the problems of Chinese and Western art, they invariably chose to break down the boundaries between Chinese and Western paintings, so as to explore the art of painting in an innovative way.
100 years ago, on January 27, 1924, Lin Fengmian, a student studying in France, together with Liu Jipiao, Lin Wenzheng, Wu Dayu, Wang Daizhi and others, organized the "Hopus Society" (Overseas Art Movement Society) in Paris. In February, the association and the art group "Art Engineering Society" in France initiated the establishment of the "Ancient Chinese and Modern Art Exhibition Preparatory Committee", hired Cai Yuanpei, who was living in Strasbourg at the time, as the honorary president, and issued a notice soliciting works: "Ancient Chinese art needs to be sorted out urgently; The artistic ideas of the East and the West are in urgent need of reconciliation and research. The new art of China's future needs to be created. ”
On May 21 of the same year, the "Chinese Art Exhibition" opened at the Rhine Palace in Strasbourg, France, which was the first large-scale exhibition of Chinese art works held in France. In the preface to the exhibition, Cai Yuanpei wrote: "European art has become more and more prominent since the rise of literature and art; This is especially true today. It is enough to recruit Chinese and Western arts, and it is necessary to exchange their strengths. Isn't it the responsibility of our artists to adopt the strengths of China in order to join the European style, and the European artists have experimented with it, but then to adopt the strengths of the Europeans to join the Chinese style? From this, we can clearly see that Cai Yuanpei's idea of the integration of Chinese and Western art has had a great impact on Lin Fengmian and other members of overseas art movements.
In 1928, Cai Yuanpei, Lin Fengmian and other gentlemen founded the National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, with the purpose of "cultivating specialized artistic talents, advocating art movements, and promoting social aesthetic education". By cultivating creative people, "with a heart that loves beauty, we can truly complete our lives". They put forward an academic proposition that echoed the original intention of art in Paris: "to introduce Western art, to organize Chinese art, to reconcile Eastern and Western art, and to create the art of the times". A generation of entrepreneurial pioneers not only taught skills, but also put their thinking on the fate of Chinese art in the tide of world history and the inquiry of the times.
Since then, Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong have returned to China to devote themselves to art education and artistic creation, and Zao Wou-Ki has been working in France since 1948 to further his studies.
The practice of painting that expresses the heart.
Artists such as Lin Fengmian, Wu Guanzhong, and Zao Wou-Ki have used their life's artistic practice to make far-reaching and contemporary answers.
Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) was born in Meixian County, Guangdong, and went to France to study in 1919, where he was deeply influenced by Western Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. As a pioneer of the idea of "integration of Chinese and Western", Lin Fengmian's artistic ideas and practices have enriched the theory and creative exploration of Chinese painting in the 20th century. He borrowed the light, color, shape, and structure of Western painting to greatly change the appearance of traditional ink painting, and created a type of painting called "color ink painting" regardless of the medium or type of painting, completing the organic combination of light, color, and ink. In this "Chinese Landscape" exhibition, his representative paintings of ladies are exhibited, such as "Ladies in Red with White Lotus" and "Ladies in Green Peach Plates", etc., which adopt a highly concise schema derived from the expression concept of Western modern art, but also full of subtle and elegant Chinese classical charm.
Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010) was born in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, studied at the Hangzhou National Art School in 1936, went to France in 1947 and returned to China in 1950. Souren Melikian, an internationally renowned art critic, commented: "The discovery of a master whose work can be a sign of a great change in the art of painting and open the way to the world's oldest culture." After carefully considering the question of how to nationalize oil painting, Wu Guanzhong chose ink and oil painting to go hand in hand, forming an oil painting with a Chinese temperament and an ink painting with modern meaning.
Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) was born in Beijing, was admitted to the Hangzhou National Art School in 1935 to study Western painting, stayed on to teach in 1941, and went to France in 1948 for further study. At that time, the National Hangzhou Art School was an important town for introducing Western modern art, Lin Fengmian and Wu Dayu taught Western modern painting courses such as Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism. Zao Wou-Ki's works are unique in style, beautiful in lines and colorful, and are his thoughts and expressions on life, nature, and the universe.
For the three painters, how to face nature, how to **, how to express their inner feelings, this is a common topic, and at the same time, combined with the different personalities of the artists, and produced a variety of presentations in the creation, as "Shi Tao Painting Quotations" in the "Respect Chapter" said, "Received and recognized, first received and then recognized", "Painting by ink, ink by pen, pen by wrist, wrist by heart".
Lin Fengmian rarely works directly with nature, but studies and understands nature through sketching, and paints with collected materials, memories and technical experience. When teaching at the Hangzhou National Art School, he emphasized "learning from nature", and while attaching importance to the basic training of modeling, he asked students to be faithful to their own feelings and give full play to their individuality.
Lin Fengmian wrote in "Ninety Self-Statement": "When I started learning painting at the age of six, I had a passionate desire to express what I saw and felt. Later, when I was studying in Europe, in the chaos of the war everywhere, I still recalled the floating clouds in my hometown, the clear stream, the distant pine forest and the green bamboo next to the house from time to time. I felt everything growing, trembling. After a rich life experience, I hope to use my sincerity and my brush to describe my feelings forever. It can be seen that Lin Fengmian expresses not only what he sees, but what he thinks and feels. Lin Fengmian's paintings are not only natural reality, but also inner reality. To some extent, he expresses the Chinese view of nature, and solves the common understanding of nature.
Wu Guanzhong has always attached great importance to painting and sketching in his artistic practice, and he believes that only when he is in nature can he give birth to the illusion of ever-changing. "It is precisely because my feelings are cultivated in the countryside, and I am faithful to my own feelings and feelings, that the artistic conception of the formal beauty excavated is often earthy. "He is looking hard in the style of sketching, in the color of ink and thought, in the splendor of life deep singing.
Zao Wou-Ki responded to Lin Fengmian's expectations of him with a lifetime of artistic practice. In the "Avenue of the Infinite Pole: Zao Wou-Ki's Centennial Retrospective Exhibition" at the Art Museum of the China Academy of Art, through more than 230 important works and documents, including 129 oil paintings, from the six sections of "Two Traditions, Symbiosis, Like a Mirror, Infinite Vitality, Poetic and Picturesque, and Becoming Wuji", we ask why Zao Wou-Ki became the combination of East and West. The viewer can intuitively feel what Zao Wou-Ki said: "There should be no distinction between realist painting and abstract painting, the only reality is the need of the heart." In his works such as "Funeral" commemorating his son who died young, "Dance" after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, "My Father's Garden" and "In Memory of Mai Trin", we can deeply feel the intersection of sorrow and joy in Zao Wou-Ki's art. How to express wind, how to express emptiness, and how to express light have become the themes of his life's creation.
In December 1947, Zao Wou-Ki held a solo exhibition in Shanghai, and Lin Fengmian wrote "On Painting - For Wuji", "After the exhibition, he will go to Europe, he will go to France, he will throw himself into the rapids of the new art in Paris, wrill in the whirlpool, he will use all his strength to bring back new and precious things to us."
Zao Wou-Ki's paintings abandon the focal perspective of the "Alberti window" and reconstruct the world of painting in the way of "full travel". His paintings emphasize the structural relationship between objects and images, and often use the "three-distance method" to roam or take a bird's-eye view, freely organizing the picture to create a continuous overall space, which is unique in the Western abstract painting system, and shows the realm of Chinese landscape painting that is "feasible, desirable, travelable, and habitable" described by the Northern Song Dynasty landscape painter Guo Xi. Brushwork is the method of manifesting the "image" of things. Zao Wou-Ki often used a Chinese brush or flat brush, which was able to move between soft and hard, and between the tilt and flip of the brush, the center and side edges alternated flexibly, blending the brush with the structure of the picture. In the intersection of form and color, in the evolution of light and shadow, in the beginning and end of the transition, he encounters the growth of nature, experiences the temporality of painting, and opens the painter's inner experience in the process of natural "development".
The innovation and development of the traditional core.
Lin Fengmian preferred Han portrait bricks, Dunhuang murals, porcelain, and opera, Wu Guanzhong valued calligraphy, and Zao Wou-Ki studied ancient Chinese characters, calligraphy, and Song painting. Their artistic path of integration and innovation between China and the West is a rediscovery of China's excellent traditional culture, a study and absorption of the strengths of Western painting from the perspective of what Chinese art is, and a unique artistic language to present the core of Chinese artistic spirit and oriental artistic conception.
In fact, this reflects the fact that modernist painting abandoned the Renaissance focus and perspective spatial expression, and instead attached importance to the expression of the heart. Lin Fengmian, Zao Wou-ki, Wu Guanzhong and others represent the re-understanding and revitalization of early Chinese traditional art. This is because, both Western primitive art and traditional Chinese art have been proven to be largely not reproducing nature, but expressing inner appeals in the most direct way.
The preciousness of the art of Lin Fengmian, Wu Guanzhong, and Zao Wou-Ki is that all three of them started from Chinese tradition and creatively integrated Western culture in the process of inheritance and development. Sullivan, a scholar at the University of Oxford, once commented: "Lin Fengmian occupies a unique position in the history of modern Chinese painting and is recognized by the world. Xu Jiang pointed out in "East and West" that Wu Guanzhong strives to bring forth the new and pursue the times in Chinese ink painting, and in oil painting and other art forms, he strives to create national characteristics and pursue national character. At the core, it adheres to the unique "poetry" and "elephant heart" of the Chinese. Art critic Pierre Schneider said of Zao Wou-Ki: "The West liberated him from the East, and the East saved him from the West." In between, he established his own ** country. ”
Lin Fengmian's "Exploration of East and West", Wu Guanzhong's "Artistic Conception Fusion", and Zao Wou-Ki's "Lyrical Abstraction" are all based on the re-understanding of tradition, and then create a unique painting method with poetic power. As Wu Guanzhong said: "Some people say that all art tends to be the best, but now, I think all art tends to poetry." Poetry contains the realm of ** and the connotation of literature, which does not refer to literary painting, but to all the poetic connotations of painting itself. This artistic style with oriental connotations enriched the face of modern art in the 20th century. It is this poetic power that has become a world language that has had a wide impact, making the three artists the most representative artistic cases of mutual learning between Eastern and Western cultures.
Lin Fengmian once said: "From a historical point of view, the development of a nation's culture must be based on its inherent culture, absorbing the culture of other nations, and creating a new era. For Wu Guanzhong, "tradition is like a river, it always has a long history and cannot be abruptly interrupted, it connects the past, the present and the future." Zao Wou-Ki rediscovered China while living in France: "Who knows how much effort I spent listening to and absorbing the teachings of Cézanne and Matisse, and then returning to the legacy that the most beautiful Tang and Song paintings in the world left me, for me? "In the midst of confusion, wandering, twists and turns, difficulties and even despair in their artistic exploration, they all look for the innovative power of creative resources from the depths of Chinese culture. Their artistic path began in the East, integrated with the West, and then influenced the world, creating a representative achievement of mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations in the field of fine arts, which can be regarded as an artistic model of the creative transformation and innovative development of China's excellent traditional culture.
Bright**" 2024-03-03 12th edition).
*: Guangming Network - "Bright **".