This year, the Shanghai Academy of Chinese Painting planned an exhibition "Qian Skinny Iron and His Circle of Friends", through Mr. Qian Slender Tie (1897-1967) 78 paintings, 6 seal seals and 26 related books, presenting his artistic achievements and travels, which triggered many topics about him.
More than ten years ago, I first saw Mr. Qian Skinny Iron's freehand Ink Mei "Yi Jie Mei Shou". The work is only one foot large, but the old plum Canggu painted, the shadow is oblique, the pen and ink are either clear or golden and stone, naturally generated, full of clear and fen, and the extreme is changing. Over the years, I have successively read a large number of mr. Qian's paintings, and I have constantly felt the feelings of his traditional literati and the chivalrous spirit of iron bones. He is a person who really sees personality, temperament and state of life in his works.
Qian Skinny Tie Mo Mei "To Jie Mei Shou"
The artistic light cannot be hidden after all
Qian Skinny Tie's growth path is completely irreproducible at present: he went to the Suzhou Stele Shop to learn art in his teens, learned to carve monuments, and was appreciated by the lyricist and Jinshi everyone Zheng Da Wei, and studied poetry, seal carving and calligraphy under his disciples. Zheng Da Wei introduced him to Wu Changshuo and Yu Yushuang, and Qian Shuangtie used Wu Changshuo, Yu Yushuang, and Zheng DaXiao as his teachers. Zheng Dawei's poetry and bone qi emptying, Wu Changshuo's ancient meaning and bone strength, and Yu Yushuang's ink dripping, all have a profound impact on it. With the promotion of the division commander and his own diligence, in just a few spring and autumn periods, Qian Skinny Iron immediately imprinted the world. In 1917, Zheng Dawei called him and his predecessors Wu Changshuo (bitter iron) and Wang Dabi (ice iron) as "Jiangnan Three Irons", that is, "he was passed on with bitter iron and ice iron, dingzhi and three, and also Jiangsu Yilin Yijia". In the orderly and hierarchical art forest at that time, Qian Thin Tie received this evaluation, which showed his talent, strength and influence.
In 1922, Qian Skinny Iron met the Japanese calligrapher and painter Hashimoto Sekiyuki, who invited him to Japan many times and introduced him to the Japanese calligraphy and painting circles. With the support of Hashimoto Sekiyuki, Tanizaki Junichiro, Aizu Yachiichi and others, Qian Shoutie has held many exhibitions in Japan and is highly respected by the Japanese gold stone calligraphy and painting circles. With his connections in Japan, Qian Also provided a lot of important information on China's War of Resistance Against Japan. For assisting Guo Moruo to return from Japan, Qian Wasletie was arrested by the Japanese police. Unwilling to be humiliated, he was sentenced to 4 years in prison in Japan for hitting the police with utensils. After returning to China, Qian Shoutie continued to study pen and ink, and in 1956, when he was preparing to build the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy in Shanghai, he was hired as a painter.
Reading Mr. Qian's pen and ink, what impresses people even more is the sloppiness outside the pen and ink, the truth of temperament, and the bones of the literati. They can be touching, they can move people, they can make people think.
Many years ago, I asked Mr. Zheng Zheng to write a reminiscence of Qian Skinny Iron's interaction with Tang Yun, and Mr. Zheng once lamented: "Qian Skinny Tie is famous for his chivalry in the painting world... We know very little about Qian's thin iron personality; today's painting world is silent about Qian's thin iron, and we know too little about his art. Whenever I think about it, I always feel that the times are ashamed of this all-round painter. ”
Sincerely. For a long time, Qian's thin iron art has not received the evaluation it deserves and has been somewhat obscured, but the light of art cannot be hidden after all. In the exhibition "Qian Shantie and His Circle of Friends", a group of famous artists such as Wu Changshuo, Zeng Xi, Zhang Daqian, Wu Hufan, Tang Yun, Guo Moruo, hashimoto Guanxue and so on were introduced. This is another slim iron exhibition in important art exhibition halls after the 2018 China Art Palace "Iron Bone Danxin - Qian Skinny Iron Works Exhibition" and last year's Zhejiang Art Museum's "Undressing Majestic - Qian Skinny Iron, Hashimoto Guanxue Exchange Retrospective Exhibition", which also continues to trigger the topic of re-evaluating a generation of calligraphers and painters Qian Skinny Iron.
The China Academy of Painting in Shanghai attempts to study and display Qian's art through the exhibition from the perspectives of "works of art in social context" and "artists in social relations". Dean Chen Xiang once said that Qian's thin iron maverick can still stand out, which is the result of favorable times and places. It can be seen from this that while realizing the transformation from elitism to popularization, Haipai painting also accommodates professional artists who continue the spirit of traditional literati painting. Through "Qian Skinny Iron and His Circle of Friends", we can not only see his social status and influence, but also clearly see the influence of Chinese culture on Japan, and this influence is precisely from Shanghai, a highly open and modern city.
Only the chivalrous bones see "Chang Shen"
Many years ago, I felt the wind god of Mr. Qian Skinny Iron, and I used Mr. Huang Yongyu's sketch of Mr. Qian Slender Iron as a model, and wrote a portrait of Mr. Qian Thin Iron when he was printing in stick figure ink. I didn't think about it when I wrote it, so I wrote down three words - "Chang Shen Tu".
Gu Cunyan paints qian skinny iron "Chang Shen Tu"
The word "Chang Shen" involves the core topic of Chinese literati painting, and among the modern maritime masters, Wu Changshuo, Liu Haisu, Qian Shoutie and so on are particularly aware of this. Mr. Qian Skinny Iron, who sends Jinshi calligraphy and painting, most of his works express his exuberant talent, the so-called "fun to melt his mind" and "just to relax the gods". In its pen and ink, a "Chang" word sees the bones of a hero and a true and free soul. "Chang Shen" in modern times also has a background of the times for the salvation of the nation-state, only the heroic bones, see Chang Shen.
To understand Mr. Qian's "Chang Shen", we must understand the pursuit of Chinese literati painting, and what is pen and ink, what is true Chinese painting, and what is the core meaning of Chinese painting.
The depths of Chinese culture have always advocated a state of vitality and exuberance, such as the "I Ching" said that "Tianxingjian, a gentleman with self-improvement". Since the beginning of China's history, it has been constantly invaded and enslaved by foreign countries. A generation of scholars who take "the rise and fall of the world" as their mission realizes that it is necessary to remove servility and strengthen bones. For example, in terms of art, it revived the great beauty of the Qin and Han dynasties. This is manifested in the artist's strong spirit and sustenance for creation, advocating a majestic strength between pen and ink, taking the law and basing itself on the Qin and Han Dynasties, and pursuing a kind of Yuanhun beauty that revitalizes the national spirit.
The Qi of Yuan Hun came from the pre-Qin and Qin and Han dynasties, and it can be seen where the source of Chinese literati painting is. Whether it is the Western Han Dynasty mural "Yuren Tu" that is connected with Hanjian calligraphy, or the Han Dynasty Moya stone carving "Han San song", "Ode to the Stone Gate", "Ode to the West Narrow", and "Ode to the Pavilion" that Mr. Qian Shantie greatly loved, it shows that the inner spirit of gu humble and flying yi has an influence on the later Yige yiyi, and its seal carvings and books are high and simple, with a profound and elegant style.
The bottom of the pen is quenched with passion under the knife
Mr. Qian Shutie's calligraphy and seal engraving especially benefited from the early years of inscription, he used a pen like a knife, and took a lot of methods for "Han Sansong" and Zhang Cao, Han Jian, etc., and the calligraphy was especially vigorous in the roundabouts, and there was a huge internal tension; his seal carving was personally taught by Zheng Daxiao and Mr. Wu Changshuo, and he went deep into the ancient seal of Qin and Han, and integrated into the method of inscription, which appeared to be vigorous and simple and eclectic.
In terms of landscape painting, he probably put the most effort into the "Four Monks of the Qing Dynasty", especially Shi Tao. Among modern and contemporary painters, Fu Baoshi, Zhang Daqian, Tang Yun, etc. all love Shi Tao the most, but when it comes to pen and ink, the one who is most compatible with Shi Tao, the most discerning and reckless, or Mr. Qian Skinny Iron. Although his paintings are not as strange as Shi Tao's, they are more powerful, and they are steel and iron, reckless and majestic, and have a spirit of embracing the world.
My favorite is Mr. Qian Shantie's series of landscape paintings on the Gorge River, whose composition is strange and stubborn, and purely wins with lines. This has a lot to do with his deep sketching in Various Parts of Sichuan and Shaanxi in the 1950s. At that time, he swam in the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, painted many sketches, and then integrated the taste of gold and stone with the inherent ease, and reading it could really feel the great pleasure of Du Fu's poem "that is, from the Ba Gorge through the Wu Gorge, then down Xiangyang to Luoyang". Compared with his favorite Shi Tao, the richness and clarity of the Jiangnan landscape he painted were of course inferior, because they were limited by the limitations of the literary and artistic creation ideas of that era, after all, they could not let go of their hands and feet. In works such as "Dawning First Illumination Military Field" and "Mountain Township Commune All Over the Terraces", his composition and the ancient clumsiness of the pen are consistent, and the ink color is more transparent. In the work "The Rising Sun rises in the east", the pale gray ink color of the distant large area holds up a round of red sun, and the brush of the close-up trees is simple and like a Chinese painting, but it is interesting and innovative.
Compared with landscape paintings, among Mr. Qian's flower and bird freehand paintings, my favorite one is an eagle, a plum blossom, and a pine tree, because these themes can see his heart.
His painting of plum blossoms should have originally been related to Zheng Daxiao and Wu Changshuo. Zheng DaXiao admired Jiang Baishi and liked the elegant and light style, Qian Shoutie was born in Wuxi, Jiangnan, and must have a good understanding of this style, and Wu Changshuo once had a poem "Bitter Railway Man Mei Confidant". Under the influence of the two division chiefs, it is inevitable that Qian Skinny Iron will fall in love with the lonely and cold plum blossom and paint his affection, and his painting plum directly inherits the style of painting with the brush of the seal, supplemented by a light rhyme, gao gu and xiuyi complement each other, and the dot flowers are full of paper, and the reading is full of fragrance.
When painting flowers, Qian Skinny Iron used pen and ink to be more calm and clumsy, such as "Gu Yan" exhibited at the China Painting Academy in Shanghai, and Liu Haisu's inscription "Qingxiong Is Absolutely Vulgar", which can be described as a true theory. The brush and ink he uses to paint loose is also a consistent style, the pine stem is improvised with the pen of the seal, the pine needle is scattered and casual, and the pen and ink are either vigorous or clear and light, thick and flexible.
His eagles are particularly exhilarating. The two exhibitions of "Qian Skinny Iron and His Circle of Friends" and "Undressing Majestic" have carefully presented a wall of painting eagles, which can be called shocking. In paintings such as "Eagle Strikes the Long Sky" and "There is a Soaring Spirit", the eagle's eyes are sharp, and the pen is bold and spicy, and if it is directly down when spreading its wings, it will grow vertically and horizontally.
To read the art of qian skinny iron, you cannot "talk about painting with pictures", "talk about books with books" or "discuss printing with prints". His inner is the wind bone, is "painting as a mail", is the pursuit of revitalizing the national spirit. In fact, Shi Tao was rediscovered and revered in the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, precisely because of people's demand for the recasting of the national spirit.
Mr. Qian's books, paintings and prints, with his sincere personality and the truth of his temperament, are full of momentum and full of passion under the knife at the bottom of the pen, which can really be described as a magnificent undressing. Combined with the "true painter" recorded in "Zhuangzi Tian Zifang", this is the "true painter". In the history of modern Chinese freehand literati painting, Mr. Qian's art is a presence that cannot be ignored, and at the same time, it has indeed been underestimated in the past. In recent years, the Series of Qian Skinny Iron exhibitions launched by the China Art Palace and the Shanghai China Academy of Painting have contributed greatly to its research, but the author thinks that these exhibitions may be just the beginning.