Old, new, real, surreal

"Oil on canvas? No way, young man."A century ago, this could be the most polite reaction of a traditional Chinese ink painter after hearing the strange term from someone claiming to have studied oil painting in the West.

This reaction would have been natural given the state of art in China. In 1925, painter Liu Haisu (1896-1994) was cursed as an "art traitor" for using nude models when teaching "Western painting" in an art school he opened in Shanghai.

Again natural, considering that a group of young Chinese artists during the '85 New Art Wave were passionately arguing for modern art when their Western counterparts were already contemplating the significance of postmodernism.

The import known as oil painting, nevertheless, has gradually been accepted by the Chinese masses and rooted in the Chinese arts over the past 100 years.

In the past century this Western tradition has been remarkably influenced by Chinese culture and enriched with the creative exploration of Chinese oil painters.

"Chinese Oil Painting in the 20th Century," an exhibition running through July 23 at the China National Art Museum in Beijing, chronicles the up-and-down 100-year history of Chinese oil painting and its effects on Chinese society.

Displaying more than 400 paintings by 270 representative Chinese oil painters born between 1869 and 1971, the exhibition covers all major phases of oil painting development in China, with particular emphasis on the past 51 years since the New China was founded.

The show, which occupies all of the museum's exhibition halls, is jointly sponsored by the Art Department of the Ministry of Culture, the China Society of Oil Painting and the China National Art Museum.

Oil painting society secretary-general Zhang Zuying, who is also a participating artist, said all the exhibits were borrowed from the China National Art Museum, other museums and organizations and private collectors.

About 20 works of art, primarily rare early paintings, are on loan from art galleries and cultural organizations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Among the works are Xu Xingzhi's "Evening Walk - Tokyo Street Scene" (1926), Qiu Di's "Still Life" (1928-29) and Chang Yu's "Potted Flowers"(1931).

The show also features works by some first-generation oil painters trained in Europe, America or Japan but who later became obscure. Among these artists are Li Tiefu (1869-1952), Li Shutong (1880-1942), Qin Xuanfu (1906-1998), Sha Qi and Zhao Shou.

Western-trained artists Xu Beihong's "Riverside" (1923) and Liu Haisu's "Sunset at Notre Dame de Paris" (1930), will refresh the eyes of Chinese viewers familiar with these artists' later works.

The works reveal a mastery of the techniques and forms common to Western oil painting with extensive influence from classical European paintings and modernist styles in vogue in the West at the beginning of the century.

"Although artists such as Lin Fengmian (1900-91), Pang Xunqin (1906-88) and Wei Tianlin (1898-1977) began to experiment with modernist paintings in the 1930s, classical figurative painting as advocated by resolute realist artists like Xu Beihong (1895-1953) has turned out to be the mainstream ever since," wrote Beijing art critic Shao Dazhen in the catalogue for the exhibition.

From the late 1930s to the late 1970s, when China experienced endless warfare and turbulence, art served revolutionary purposes, and realist art became more understandable to the masses.

This tradition finds expression in oil paintings done in the realist style, or the revolutionary realist style.

Most of the revolutionary realistic paintings were done in the 1950s and 1960s, when art was influenced by realist paintings from the former Soviet Union. The paintings cover wartime life, revolutionary heroes and leaders and the Chinese people's enthusiasm for building a socialist nation.

Representative revolutionary realistic artists were Dong Xiwen (1914-73), Luo Gongliu, Cai Liang (1932-95), Ai Zhongxin, Sun Cixi, and Jin Shangyi. The exhibits include Luo Gongliu's "Battle in a Tunnel" (1951) which depicts some northern Chinese guerrillas fighting Japanese invaders in a tunnel, and Cai Liang's "Sons of Peasants" (1964), showing two village boys asking Red Army leader Mao Zedong to accept them in the army.

Painters such as Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian and Wu Zuoren (1909-89) also introduced realistic techniques in Western oil painting into traditional Chinese painting during the 1930s and 1940s partly because they lacked art supplies and a stable society that could support their avocation.

Their experiments have since influenced the creation of almost all forms of later Chinese art.

A few thematic exceptions on display include Taiwan artist Liao Jichun's semi-abstract "Ancient Spanish City" (1962) and Shanghai painter Zhou Bichu's "Spring Scene" (1962). The impressionist flavour in Zhou's landscape, however, was unusual for a mainland artist at that time.

The Spiritual emancipation with the country's reform and opening up after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) has stimulated the creativity of Chinese artists, making the Chinese art scene more plural and diverse.

Some realist oil painters, for example, turned to themes such as human nature and individual lives. Representative works include Luo Zhongli's "Father" (1980), Jin Shangyi's "Tajik Bride" (1983) and He Duoling's "Spring Breeze is Awake" (1981).

Younger generations of oil painters, who are largely inspired by Western modern art and want their individuality, concern themselves more with social problems and personal visions.

Zhang Xiaogang's work "Big Family No 1" (1998), for instance, satirizes the social disease that people all - men, women, young, old - look the same in a society lacking in individuality.

Today, symbolic, expressive, abstract, surrealist and fantasy styles of oil paintings co-exist with realist paintings in China. Experimental techniques such as collage are also being introduced to Chinese oil painting.

Many Chinese artists, both early and contemporary, have incorporated elements of traditional Chinese mural painting, folk art, calligraphy and ink painting to paint works of oil with Chinese flavour.

"These experiments, in a way, make the artistic language of oil painting more implicit, lyrical and poetic. Oil painting, as a result, has become closer and closer to the aesthetic tastes of Chinese people," Shao Dazhen said.

Date: 07/19/2000
Author: YANG YINGSHI, China Daily staff
Copyright? by China Dail

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