Beijing Xishan has a special significance for a generation of people who are known for their idyllic prose and novels in the history of modern literature. He wrote many famous works during his stay in Xishan.
At the foot of the West Mountain, the Beijing Intermediate Art Museum is holding a retrospective exhibition of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu. Comparing the creation of reading the abandoned name in Xishan with the scenery of Xishan full of personal emotions in the pen of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, there may be a different kind of thinking.
De-named
Defamation was born in 1901. In 1927, against the background of the defeat of the National Revolution, he dropped out of Peking University and began to live in a dilapidated home in Xishan, Beiping, where he spent five years creating his early masterpieces "Bridge", "Taoyuan" and "Jujube". These novels are quite prose, and the bottom of the pen is overflowing with natural poetry. Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu were born in 1937 and 1944 respectively, and soon after they met and met at the private Xihua Art Cram School in 1959, they began to go out sketching together, from the extremely chaotic 60s and 1970s, and still do today. Xishan in Beijing is one of the regular locations they often go to sketch, and the fragrant mountains, botanical gardens and Reclining Buddha Temple in this area are often seen in their pens. Also using nature as a material, the waste name weaves poetry with words, and Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu use paintbrushes to sketch all their lives.
In 1968, Zhao Wenliang, Yang Yushu and their friends were on the sketching road leading to the Botanical Garden in Xishan
Looking back at the 1920s, 1930s and 1960s and 1970s, against the backdrop of revolution (albeit for different purposes), the mainstream of the literary and art circles threw themselves into the critical creation of society, embarked on the road of politicization, and charged forward with pens and knives. Abandoned name, Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu have created a natural corner of their own, haunting Xishan in Beijing, the bottom of the pen is natural poetry, and the heart is pastoral pastoral, not in line with the times.
Today, the Beijing Intermediate Art Museum at the foot of the West Mountain is holding a retrospective exhibition of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu. Geographical karma gives us the opportunity to make imaginative comparisons of literature and art, review the lyrical creation and natural mood of different eras, watch the scene of the Western Mountains full of personal emotions in the pens of the abolition of the name, Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, reflect on their common classical feelings and Chinese and Western orientations, and especially worth comparing with the interruption of the abolition of the name "sketching" after the founding of the People's Republic of China and the beginning of the creation of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu.
The bottom of the pen is natural, "sketching" Beijing Xishan
Under the pen "there are paintings in poetry, there are poems in paintings", the landscape paintings he uses words to depict are not only a portrayal of nature, but also a freehand of mood. Similarly, such a description can also be applied to Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu.
In 1946, when he recalled his student days, he wrote in the "Preface to the Students of Huangmei Junior High School": "The education I received was completely of no benefit to me, only harmful... Only 'nature' is good for me... Before the age of ten, it was in line with Tao Yuanming's 'Huai Liangchen to go solitary', and achieved a literary career twenty years later." Buju Xishan, the natural tone of the defunct name is fully revealed. In "The Bridge", he wrote a series of loose stories with unclear locations, but his pen and ink focused on the creation of natural moods. For example, his "Xiaolin", who lives outside the city, looks at the city wall from afar, and it is clear that it is a childlike painting:
"Everything outside the city wall, painted with a faint twilight, the tip of the tower with a thousand years of dwarf light, and finally gradually darkened, the crows flew one by one, Xiaolin's whimsy opened, a tear can actually grow a tree, the future mother beat him, he ran here to cry, his tree is going to be ten thousand feet high, all over the world can be seen at a glance, and at night, the stars are like flowers." ”
In "Jujube", the name is discarded as if he were narrating his experience through "the words of tourists": "I am a guest of the Western Mountains again." This so-called spring is only on the tree, and the tree is only a willow... Outside the willows, the mountains are in the air, and you can see the peach and apricot blossoms, but this makes people particularly desolate... The weather is warm, the road on the mountain, riding a donkey, the plain is in sight, far and near is all willow village, if you come out early and return late, the sunset is naturally gone, turn over the mountain, suddenly see that side of the mountain, the sky, the moth eyebrow moon, then this spring is beautiful. If someone is on the other hand! "The people who dot on the natural landscape of the waste name are the people who travel, and more than once, these lovely people ride donkeys freely in the mountains, not knowing whether to commute or play.
In the same article, the name is also mentioned: "I live in Yokoyama South. The so-called 'mountain south mountain north' is probably said by Hengshan Mountain. The scenic spots in the west mountain are all in the north of the mountain, but I don't want to go more, I hate that the characters in that area are arranged like they appear in the movie, so it is the tree of the Reclining Buddha Temple, and the ancient tree blossoms what I love to see, and it also interrupts the interest of visiting." Although the heart is towards the Reclining Buddha Temple, it is inconvenient to form and difficult to go. However, the inconvenience for him was not a problem for Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, who later went to Xishan to sketch. They enjoy going to Wat Pho to sketch, even in the most radical of times.
On August 18, 1966, Chairman Mao received the Red Guards at Tiananmen Square for the first time during the Cultural Revolution. Zhao Wenliang, Yang Yushu and Shi Zhenyu met again at the end of September and decided to continue sketching. On October 2, the trio went to West Hill, far from the city center. In the painting "Leading to the Reclining Buddha" co-created on the road that day, unlike "the mountains and rivers of the whole country are red", they used a cool blue base to make the sky and mountains. The foreground is sketchy, but it also outlines lush trees and sloped roads. They also imagined the dots of characters for such a beautiful scenery and projected their self-image.
Wenliang Zhao, Yushu Yang, Zhenyu Shi, "Leading to the Temple of the Reclining Buddha", 1966, 18x21.5cm
During the Cultural Revolution, Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu repeatedly went to Xishan to sketch with small picture boxes that were easy to hide. In the period when politics was in charge, despite the harsh conditions and the "bourgeois life atmosphere" to be carried out slowly in secret, Yang Yushu also cultivated and strengthened his own painting style. In 1968's "Wat Pho Crossing", we can see his characteristic agile and short but also broad and thick brushstrokes. Although the arrangement of short brushes still lacks a sense of order, the roughness of this stage will gradually fade with the experience of the painter, and eventually condensed into a pure personal language.
Yang Yushu, "Reclining Buddha Temple Intersection", 1968, 28.7x23cm
In 1969, Zhao Wenliang painted "Untitled" in Xiangshan. After he was fired from the factory the previous year, in addition to asking for reinstatement, he took his young daughter and carried a picture box everywhere to sketch. Behind this work, the painter wrote a large number of written records of the background of the painting, including the following: "This painting was painted in Xiangshan, and Yang came holding Erxiu (like running)." Painting is very peaceful, but lacks painterliness, which is limited by the structure of the environment, too focused on the surface of the object, will inevitably go to the machinery... There is too much ground, to remove an inch and a half, may be slightly better! The embarrassment of his personal life and the pressure of the times did not stop him from stepping into nature and looking for another pure land of soul and humanity.
Zhao Wenliang, Untitled, 1969, 25.5X19cm
The teacher is natural, the heart chases the classics, and the East and the West are synchronized
The abolition of names, Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu are all teachers of nature, but the nature they write about is not just an objective foreign object. Through their depictions and coloring, nature is endowed with humanity and humanity. The benevolence of heaven and earth is all in the pen. In the great age of great change in which they find themselves, nature becomes a place of spiritual refuge.
At the same time, the commonality of their literary and artistic creations is also clearly reflected in the respect and tuna of classical Chinese culture. Their literature and art not only express the innocence and beauty in the sense of nature ontology, but also pin their own life experience and feelings, and further, give nature a broader level of cultural connotation - at least, they are ideally pursuing the last realm.
The natural poetry of the abolitionist pen has a clear literary origin, and in the "Preface to the Selected Novels of the Abolitionist Name", he said: "In terms of the method of expression, I am clearly influenced by Chinese poetry, and I write novels the same as the Tang Dynasty wrote absolute sentences." Specifically expressed in his creations, such as in "Jujube", he wrote about the backyard scene when he lived in Beijing: "Usually, those who are also conceited and can talk about poetry, only then can they even take the ancient Qingzhuo's sentence to Fang Fei as a wonderful thing: Most of them are at dusk, alone, and greedy under the grapevine." A school of poetry and scenery merges. What is particularly interesting is that as a modern literati who grew up with the new culture and the vernacular movement, Abolition name once wrote a special article "Talking about the Use of Allusions", trying to reconcile vernacular articles with ancient chinese allusions. His exposition begins with China's "no article and no allusions", rejecting the long and tiring pile of allusions. After the criticism, he turned sharply and began to praise, emphasizing that interesting articles are inseparable from appropriate allusions and should "express the realm of allusions". The appearance of classical imagery in disreputable prose and fiction adds interest and depth to its essays.
Similarly, the creations of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu often draw resources from ancient literature, especially in the naming of paintings, such as "Stripped of Turbidity and Clear", "The Wind Rises and the Clouds Fly", "The Broken Intestines are at the End of the World", "The Little Lotus Shows sharp corners" and so on. Among them, in the 1989 "Broken Intestine Man at the End of the World", there is no one or the scene of the end of the world, but the uneasy mountains and soil, the bald trees swaying in the wind, and the depression. Zhao Wenliang deliberately invoked Ma Zhiyuan's small order, and the literary meaning combined with the painting intention strengthened the lyrical touch of borrowing scenery. Since the 1980s, Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu have intensified their Chinese meaning in their works, not only often talking about the aesthetics of Su Dongpo and Tao Yuanming in conversation, but also trying to practice in painting, such as painting Chinese-style stick figure bottle paintings, origami flowers, deliberately leaving blank space in landscape sketching to emphasize the flow of qi rhyme, or deliberately emphasizing the dynamics of writing when drawing themes such as the Yellow River.
Zhao Wenliang, "The Broken Intestines in Tianya", 1989, 65.5X60cm
Yang Yushu, "Apricot Blossom", 2006, 19.8X24.8cm
Zhao Wenliang, Hukou Waterfall, 1994, 80X60cm
Lyrical depictions of nature and landscape are not China's specialty. The literary and artistic creation of the West from classical to modern times has also provided many resources. As far as the name is concerned, he does not deny it: "In art, I have absorbed some of the strengths of foreign literature, and I have changed the poetry of classical Chinese literature, which is obvious." As for the capture and rendering of its natural artistic conception, Wang Zengqi wrote an article in 1996 about the tendency of "stream of consciousness" in the abolition of famous works. Although the name of the name itself is not used, or even conscious, of the "stream of consciousness" as an imported word, Wang Zengqi believes that this "cannot be denied that it is a stream of consciousness." He perceived the distance between the abolitionist name and the Ulles, but closer to Virginia Woolf. Interestingly, Wang Zengqi further enumerates the "stream of consciousness" among Chinese poets, as in his view, "Wen (Feiqing) Li (Shangyin) of the late Tang Dynasty was." In comparison, Li Shangyin is more imaginative and has no trace to seek. Wen is not spared from being lightly injured." Further, he believes that the abolition of the name is more influenced by Li Shangyin.
The same Chinese and Western analogies have repeatedly appeared in the interpretation of the works of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu. In his early years, Zhao Wenliang copied socialist realist oil paintings from Soviet magazines and visited Soviet exhibitions in Beijing in the 1950s, but he quickly stepped out of the portrayal of realism and freely experimented with color at the Xihua Art Tutorial School; Yang Yushu received a brief education in Chinese painting, and later met Zhao Wenliang, studied with him, and tempered the language of his art in travel sketching. The duo's emphasis on color and their use of stick figures to depict scenes in light often remind people of Impressionism and "Matisse". However, the artist himself did not directly draw a lot of resources from Western Impressionism, but like Wang Zengqi's evaluation of the abolition of names, he often emphasized the borrowing of creative techniques and presentation methods from his own cultural traditions. As they age, Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu seem to be deliberately disconnected from modern Chinese art and contemporary art, invoking classical Chinese culture to interpret the particularity of their works. When such fun is combined with sketching in nature, it is easy to think of the literati tradition of calligraphy and painting, and they do not want to mix in the city, but want to return to the mountains and forests.
Yang Yushu, "Reclining Buddha Temple Intersection", 2016, 38X23cm
Tell your heart in different paths
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the creation of abolished names has undergone a major change. It can be said that in terms of the nature of "sketching", the abolition of names was completely "stopped" at the end of the 1950s; at the same time, this was the "beginning" of the younger generations Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu, who insisted that going out to sketch was a creative means with political risks and therefore special situational connotations. They are a very small minority of the times.
The suspension of the name cannot be simply equated with the loss of artistic creation, and it is not intended to highlight the painting sketches of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu. After all, they are about forty years apart, and the pressures in historical contexts are completely different. After the founding of New China, the abolition of the name was already a well-known writer, and he had to coordinate with the new literary and artistic framework; and he himself, perhaps out of sincerity, wanted to transform himself and keep pace with the new era. From the reform of the name and the confessional text, we can smell the oppressive literary and artistic orientation, and peek into the mainstream literary and artistic creation of that historical period. On this basis, we can also think about the natural value of the young painters Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu who went out to sketch.
The abolition once wrote: "After liberation, everyone put forward the slogan of realism, I have reflected on it, I wholeheartedly support it, I think that realism is to reflect reality, to be able to reflect reality, and their political consciousness will gradually increase, like the Communists." And what I write is mainly personal subjective, and indeed insignificant. Not only is it insignificant, but it is shameful."
Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu were from bad backgrounds, and before the "Cultural Revolution", they luckily entered the factory and were able to receive a little protection from the collective. They create amateurs, take time to sketch, are young and have no name. This is actually a protection, as an unknown amateur young painter, at least can sneak out into nature, without being asked by the literary and artistic circles to set an example. The "realism" needed in the era of the abolition of the name has never entered the artistic vision of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu. In the period when the individual and the subjective are suppressed and collectivism is infinitely magnified, they choose to go their own way. Perhaps the most expressive expression of their emphasis on individualism is portrait creation! At the "New Moon: Retrospective Exhibition of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu" at the Beijing Intermediate Art Museum, the first exhibition wall focused on their portraits from the 1960s and 1970s. There is no typical image of the workers, peasants, and soldiers, no great leaders, no prominence and praise; only confident and affirmative self-portraits, portraits of friends and relatives with different personalities and different encounters, and even martyrs who meet Roque. Here, the small individual and the indelible subjectivity confront the fanatical and nihilistic collective worship of an era.
Personal Portrait Wall, "New Moon: Retrospective Exhibition of Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu", Middle Art Museum, Beijing