Reprinted from Zhuang Zexi Shanghai Art Platform
In 1990, before Chen Yifei settled in China, 30 years later, Yi Zhinan, a young singer who was popular all over the Internet, had hung a copy of his "Flute Player" in the United States in the piano room, a scene captured by photographer Xiao Quan. She seems to be listening to the silent music in the painting, and her thoughts are endless, just like we look at her old images, thinking about the puzzle of beauty: how is beauty transmitted?
As the first anniversary exhibition of Shanghai Jinchen Yifeiming Art Museum, "Young Chen Yifei: The Man Who Threw the Javelin" will focus on the aesthetic myth created by Chen Yifei and the generation of its influence, with the help of more than 100 of Chen Yifei's early creations, classroom assignments, sketching works, creative manuscripts and sketches that have been collected over the years and made public for the first time, outlining the source of Shanghai's Haipai art in The Tushan Bay and its special style in the practice of modern Chinese art, and with detailed documentary materials, showing the young Chen Yifei's comprehensive traditional Chinese aesthetics. The creative ideas and practical methods of European classical art and Soviet realist socialist art will also be combined with digital media technology to immersively restore their creative scene and living environment.
Discus thrower "javelin thrower" is an inextricable theme in art history. The artistic code laid down by Pollycretes, da Vinci's definition of the modeling paradigm, to The Street Boy throwing bouquets in Banksy, the intermediate state of the javelin thrower figure illuminates the spirit of the artist who bursts out of rupture and imbalance and breaks the deadlock. With the subtitle of "The Man Who Threw the Javelin", this exhibition reviews Chen Yifei's choice and creation in the rupture period of artistic development, and the prospects he throws for new Chinese art, and inspires young people to understand the keen vision and spiritual outlook of modern Chinese artists by approaching Chen Yifei's artistic life.
Exhibition Name: Young Chen Yifei: Javelin Thrower Exhibition Time: November 20, 2021 – February 20, 2022 Organizer: Shanghai Jinchen Yifeiming Art Museum Exhibition Address: No. 88, Yonghong Road, Minhang District, Shanghai
Chen Yifei's artistic origin in Shanghai Is just like the aesthetic prospects thrown by Chen Yifei in an extraordinary period and the controversial creative ideas after his return to China, all settled after his death, and were confirmed to be a natural progressive experiment, turning into spring mud and protecting flowers; Chen Yifei's artistic learning and thinking in his youth, that is, his artistic source stream, can never be simply summarized as a branch of "Su school art", on the contrary, Shanghai in the 60s and its nurtured Shanghai school art, which juxtaposed Western colonial heritage and revolutionary discourse, have never been." Mask this relationship between source and flow... At that time, the artistic views and teaching ideas were more like French Impressionism, at least a combination of the Soviet and French sets" (Zhang Longji). When I was eleven or twelve years older, my classmates older than me took me out of Puguang Middle School and went to the Youth Association under the Sichuan Road Bridge across the road to listen to Teacher Yan's lecture on color science... He said that light colors will be colder on dark colors, and these examples are very well remembered, and he often uses Suzhou dialect to imitate the tone of the old man's home to tell friends. ——Chen Yifei
Teachers of Shanghai Municipal Art College, from left: Zhang Longji, Zhou Bichu, Yan Wenliang, Yu Yunjie, the first chapter of the exhibition presents Chen Yifei's adolescent works and study works, which vividly portray the teaching situation of Shanghai Fine Arts College. Before being thoroughly baptized by Supai art, the plastic color techniques and creation theories of European classicism and impressionist art had been deeply rooted in Chen Yifei's creative language, and alternated with its ups and downs in the change of the times- Yan Wenliang's impressionist color science, "Chinese Zhang" Zhang Chongren's anatomy rich in the content of world cultural history, Harding's watercolor paintings and Chinese paintings, Meng Guang's modeling sketching training methods, and the courses dragged out by Wu Dayu, Zhou Bichu, Yu Yunjie, and Zhang Longji lamp masters all continued to nourish Chen Yifei's generation of Shanghai artists. And they will be able to prepare a more open creative context in the future. In addition, in the period of material scarcity, Chen Yifei also used Soviet films (such as "Five Days and Five Nights" and "Painter Surikov") and classical art lenses in magazines as a window to glimpse the colorful western art essence, and even made him silently write down the strong impressions squeezed out of these memory sponges with thick painting methods, and directly quoted them into the sketching training and creation of the same period. These impressionist and even expressionist images seem to indicate Chen Yifei's determination and figure to enter the world art stage in the 1980s and firmly lead Haipai and Chinese aesthetics to the world.
Chen Yifei, oil painting "Pioneer", in 1971 (in cooperation with Wei Jingshan) "Pioneer" Chen Yifei exhibition the second chapter focuses on the first turn in Chen Yifei's artistic career: that is, in terms of creative ideas, narrative language and techniques, from the active exploration and successful transformation of the genre of workers, peasants and soldiers to the genre of historical painting, and this creative shift that originated from the extraordinary period finally laid its status and value in the Chinese painting world. How do you transform your subjective world? An example from Water Margin that inspired me was the story of the white stripes in the Black Whirlwind. It shows that defeat and victory are opposites and under certain conditions are mutually transformative. From land to water, the conditions are reversed on one side. In my opinion, this is the two sides of the contradiction, each transforming into its opposite according to certain conditions. As Lenin said, "Everything develops, everything transforms into each other." ——Chen Yifei's preparatory period essay "Digging mountains and moving mountains" Paragraphs At the same time, several classic works created by Chen Yifei in the 60s and 70s are juxtaposed with the creative manuscripts, sketching materials and related notes and documents of the same period, from which we will gain insight into the development of Chen Yifei's painting narrative techniques. The compositional techniques and light and color techniques from Western classicism and impressionism, as well as the grand style and contradictory narrative of Soviet socialist realism, were incorporated into his painting practice one by one. He seems to be "talking" with the Western masters in his memory, and at the same time, in that crazy era, he insists on the truth that the artist should uphold, trying to find all the possibilities for breakthroughs.
Chen Yifei inspected the Yellow River, in 1970, his "Pioneer" went beyond the theme of workers, peasants and soldiers, and the narrative technique of the comprehensive perspective method injected a temporal and spatial vein into the work, thus entering the height of historical painting; his "Ode to the Yellow River" brilliantly completed the task of "model painting experiment" and actively tried to introduce the musicality of the Symphonic Concerto of "Yellow River" into the painting in a synaesthesia way. And his "Red Flag", a masterpiece about the eternal inheritance of the revolutionary spirit, evokes his self-conscious creative passion as an artist, making personal emotions resonate harmoniously with monumental history paintings. These breakthroughs flashed into his creative process very quickly, and when it came to the painting "Occupy the Presidential Palace", he set a new benchmark for the creation of new Chinese historical paintings with all his knowledge accumulation. Then, he introduced film montages into painting ahead of time, outlining the faces and thinking of a generation of Chinese painters with his highly personal masterpiece "Pacing", laying out and solidifying the tone of The rise and fall of China in the past century in the 20th century.
Chen Yifei's original design when he created "Pacing" We will see that Chen Yifei explored the free breath of painting like de la Croix he adored, or won real freedom for himself with painting like Rottrek!
Chen Yifei's model Chen Yifei and the Sketch Movement in "Sketch Teaching Film" The finale highlight of this exhibition is a precious impression material that has been lost and recovered- Chen Yifei's fan painting process for Meng Guang's "Sketch Teaching Film" (1979). As the afterglow of the vigorous "sketching movement" of that year, this video once became an important tool for art academies across the country to abandon the old model of drawing teaching and revive the real and rich art modeling techniques. It once nourished a generation of Chinese art students, but suddenly disappeared. Fortunately, this precious video document was finally revived after many searches and fundraising, and will be presented to the audience at the same time as the original sketch demonstrated by Chen Yifei.
The so-called "Sketch Movement" refers to a group of young artists who seek to express their true feelings and feelings during the extraordinary period around the private art group formed by Meng Guang and his meticulously guarded art learning resources. The significance of this "movement" to the development of new Chinese art cannot help but remind people of Karachi's "scuola indifferente", that is, the painting training mechanism of suspending all positions, doctrines and emotions, and facing the modeling, human body and reality, which not only injected a novel and diversified style into the Cheschakov sketching system, but also laid the foundation for the subsequent revival of Chinese art creation.
Among them, Chen Yifei is not only an important participant, but also an active member of the whole movement, and has enthusiastically shared his experience with his peers like a "teaching assistant". The pencil sketch he demonstrated in the sketch teaching film "Young Woman" embodies the positive results of the sketching movement, and on the basis of adhering to precise realism, it shows the combination of European classical sketching techniques and Supai sketching in Tushan Bay with richer tonal processing forms and more delicate modeling techniques.
Chen Yifei's artistic achievements in the creation of "Red Flag" are worth excavating again, and the creative road he walked out of bravely climbing the peak of painting expression is more worthy of discussion and study. What makes it possible to live its glorious artistic life is the focus of the third chapter. From creative tools to study notes, from diaries to important publications of the time, the large number of documents on display will reflect the development of his creative ideas, and will find that his imaginative artistic practice and later transition to fashion and film are all conceived in the artistic experience of his youth. Let's get close to Chen Yifei and see the moment when he planted the seeds of new art. As one of the important projects of the "Maritime Style art season", this exhibition will also set up several special events to provide more resources for the audience to understand the youth of master Chen Yifei.
Exhibition Name: Young Chen Yifei: Javelin Thrower Exhibition Time: November 20, 2021 – February 20, 2022 Opening Reception: November 20, 2021 14:00 Organizer: Shanghai Jinchen Yifeiming Art Museum Exhibition Address: No. 88 Yonghong Road, Minhang District, Shanghai