Pursuing Contemporary in Chinese Landscape Painting
Pursuing Contemporary in Chinese Landscape Painting
---Liu Zhengxing
Pursuing impulsion
Arts needs enthusiasm--- commercialized production is the formidable enemy of arts.
What is the commercialized production? In my opinion, there are two representations of commercialized production in arts. One is to meet the painting dealers’ interests and give up the real affective and inspirational feelings, but make empty and superficial products for pictures shows and commercial events. (For example, some people draw many pictures about camels and plum blossom automatically, all of them look similar. The other is to try all the ways to join various exhibitions, including some national exhibitions, guessing the judges’ favoritism in order to get a prize (here I mean painters painting for exhibitions not for emotion and affection). The massive painting collection of the exhibitions is just of several painters’ products. Most paintings bear the palm in exhibitions are red, bright and light products, which are nominal.
We pursue the essence of the art for several decades unremittingly and devote ourselves to the art, looking for pure beauty. We won’t give up what we pursuer in a long time for more utilitarian and temporal but less inspirational awards and prizes. What we need are the passionate, enthusiastic and inspired artists.
The external form is from sensory stimulations, while the real scenery is more marvelous than paintings for ever.
The individualized and vivid formal language comes from the life, not from copying or following other painters’ symbols. The first step is to look for sensory stimulation. After then, the emotion and feeling become exciting, and just in that case the painting form and language will be close to the special feelings at that time. All we have the same experience—— every time we go to draw from nature, we will have different feelings, even if we go to the same place. The pictures created under different feelings are in various forms. Meanwhile, every one has his special way to experience the life, so the paintings are in diversified unique styles. Simple copy is a technique, while creative copy is an art and style. The “creativity” is from the sublimation of feeling and emotion, while the sublimation of feeling and emotion is from the life, nature and real scenery.
The natural landscape is the most marvelous.
Take the life experience as the negative to draw for nature, and experience the different feeling and situations at the same landscape.
Personal experience and life are the important resource for painters. They are the negatives of their creations. Every painter should make good use of the resource, and make best “exposure”.
I have been to draw from nature with my painter friends every month for several decades. We went through Sichuan, and the place we went most often was my second hometown, where I was an educated youth more than 30 years ago. It is at the foot of Ni Ba Mountain in Ya’an, south Sichuan, and people there are simple-hearted. It faces Qing Yi Jiang River in the north, Er’lang Mountain and Gong Ga Mountain in the west, Da Du He River and E’mei Mountain, and Ni Ba Mountain and Liang Shan in the south. There are countless canyons, mountains and several decades of falls and bourns from fountains in the 1m ² we educated youths lived. I lived a hard life there, but my painting enthusiasm was inspired. During 5 years there, I drew thousands of paintings. Once one painter lived there with me asked suddenly, why I drew falls little in recent years while the falls there are so many and so beautiful. I got no answer at that time. Indeed, I nearly never painted the falls there in those years. I thought a lot that night. Was it because I never felt the greatness and beauty of the falls or I was blunt about beauty? After smoking a long time, I understood that’s because of my life negative. My life experience decided my focuses and approaches. The different life experiences make different concerns. (Examples of that time);
1 The story happened at the river
2 The story brought by “themilitia is the groundwork of victory”…
Discover themes
The theme is the artistic conception of poems, not a slogan.
Please look at these photos. They look beautiful, and more important is that the poetical theme it presents. If we give it a slogan alike and labeling proposition, the theme will be quite different, more plain, but no beautiful sense, no feeling or afflatus. Like many so called themes in now days: educated youths “taking root”, “pediment”, and “the whole nation is in red” and “Mao Zedong went to Anyuan” in the Culture Revolution, a good painting labeled stiffly will become a slogan and sermon.
