A Different View

By Li Song

(Senior editor of Chinese Artists' Association)

It is illuminating to read the essay by Jiang Zhou (江洲), "Searching the Baseline of Traditional Chinese Painting." However I entertain a different view about several points, especially his arguments on the combination of Chinese and Western painting.

First of all, he argues in his essay that this combination is the essential manner in which twentieth-century traditional Chinese painting developed, the major representatives of this combined style being Xu Beihong (徐悲鸿) and Lin Fengmian (林风眠). However, I do not think this is the case. The outstanding problem traditional Chinese painting faced in the previous century was how to maintain its own traditions and learn from the painting of other countries. The sweeping changes to social life gave rise to the reformation of traditional Chinese painting in order to meet this challenge. Hence, the combination theory is inadeguate to characterize twentieth-century traditional Chinese painting. Apart from that, the theory was explicitly advocated by a politician named Kang Youwei (康有为), but by very few artists.

As to the latter part of Jiang Zhou's argument, my point is that both Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian are not representatives of such combination at all. Xu Beihong, on the contrary, is definitely against it. He once said, "To establish the new traditional Chinese painting is not to ameliorate, not to combine, but merely to sip from nature". In his opinion, those who appeal to extraneous techniques while being lost to Chinese traditions have not combined the good, but the bad. He said over eighty years ago, "Regarding traditions, we should observe the good, maintain the dying, improve the imperfect, integrate what is lacking, and incorporate what is adoptable from the west." It is a fairly reasonable suggestion. Lin Fengmian is not against the combination theory, but he claims, "Painting is nothing but painting, no matter which school we are talking about and of course whether we speak of Chinese or Western painting". He believes that the two must be reconciled but this does not egval a combining of the two.

Secondly, the essay argues, "In the 20th century, wash painting and color-wash painting were established by combining the two. They were originally both distinct styles, classified according to a different use of tools and materials." This statement is also worth a second consideration. The term 'color-wash painting' was used for a time by the department of traditional Chinese painting in Central Art Institution in the mid-50s. It was also employed in the Second Traditional Chinese Painting Exhibition in 1955, but since then it has never been used again due to too many objecting voices. In fact, color-wash painting is not a school independent of traditional Chinese painting and it is quite difficult to identify specifically color-wash painters.

With regards to wash painting, this name first appeared in the exhibition of wash painting from life by Zhang Ting (张汀), Li Keran (李可染) and Luo Luo (罗洛). But they used wash painting from life instead of wash painting to be more exact. In the exhibition they emphasized again and again that their experimentation was not merely a matter of tools and materials. They said, "The point is how to apply the traditional techniques and improve them in the making." In September 1959, Li Keran also used wash painting from life in his exhibition called "What a Beautiful Landscape".

So the appropriateness of the two terms is still an on-going controversy. It is extremely difficult to do as the essay suggests-that is, to draw a clear-cut line between traditional Chinese painting, wash painting and color-wash painting, to build up their respective systems and to establish values and principles of their own. The question still remains whom we should regard as wash or color-wash painters. In this sense, though we esteem the above three artists as wash painters, we cannot deny them being artists of traditional Chinese painting.

Thirdly, Jiang Zhou points out in his essay, "The combination of Chinese and Western art nearly courted the destruction of traditional Chinese painting in the twentieth century." Since it has brought forth such grave consequences, it is an absolute necessity to clarify and illustrate what this combination exactly refers to. If we don't restrict ourselves to specific words, we can easily understand what the author means and worries about. One is the blind belief in sketch as the basis of all modeling. This was stressed in previous teaching of traditional Chinese painting. The other is the practice of improving traditional Chinese painting on the basis of Western painting. These two nihilistic points of view were wiped out around 1957. Then followed the equally problematic dual-system teaching experiment. So isn't it somewhat exaggerating to say, as the author says, that this is what 'combination' means, and further to say that it has influenced the entire century's traditional Chinese painting and almost put it to destruction?