【Art Resume】
Cai Shuben, Mongolian
He studied at Inner Mongolia Normal University, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, and obtained a master's degree. He is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Qingdao University, a member of the China Artists Association, and a member of the China Mural Society.
Windwalker Rice Paper Color Ink 2021
Painting friend Cai Shuben
The author ‖ Audi
Cai Shuben and I grew up together at the newspaper office, and later learned to paint in the chaotic world of the Cultural Revolution. For some years, he often wandered between oil paintings, murals, and pottery, switching back and forth, making people feel dizzy. He was good at oil painting in his early years, and his small landscape sketches had a certain influence in the circle, but most of the works he exhibited were grassland themes, and he also published a large oil painting "Migration" in "Fine Arts"; unfortunately, the whereabouts of the paintings were later unknown, leaving only paper color manuscripts. "Toast Song" is also a work of this stage, this painting was once damaged, fortunately it was repaired in time to basically restore the old view, a few years ago participated in the national painting exhibition and was collected by the National Gallery.
In 1982, Shuben was admitted to the first Mural Seminar of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and copied a number of murals in Dunhuang and Yongle Palace. According to him, the paintings copied in Yongle Palace are large in size, and some of the paintings are joined together with two or three pieces of Koryo paper, which takes more time, and the paintings copied in Dunhuang are smaller. At the beginning, they could go to the cave every day with the key to paint by themselves, stay in it for a whole day, and at noon, they often lay in the underground of the cave for a nap, and then continue to paint. He did not use a flashlight like some students, covering the mural with a layer of thin paper to directly describe the manuscript, but mainly based on intention; he also told me that when the painting was nearly complete, he used old soy sauce to dye the back of the Koryo paper, so that the thicker part of the color could not penetrate, and the thin part of the color layer could see the texture change of the paper, and the old effect of the mural was naturally revealed. In the Academy of Fine Arts, Yuan Yunsheng took them to the white character painting class, and in the class, Shuben used a brush to draw a lot of line drawings. Later, at the end of the study, this batch of paintings was exhibited in the Inner Mongolia Normal University Exhibition Hall, and after the withdrawal of the exhibition, all the works were left in the school, stamped with the official seal on the back of the painting, and placed together with the antiquities and calligraphy collected by the department, which became a state-owned asset, which is rare to see. He himself did not leave a painting in his own hands, nor did he give any reward.
I remember that he did not pass the department when he applied for the refresher course, and did not go to the leader until he was admitted, and at first he did not agree to go, but after trying to reluctantly agree to it, the condition was that the works during the training should be owned by the department. Although, apart from salaries, the school did not contribute any funds (at that time, ethnic minority teachers did not charge fees). During the study period, he made a batch of things in Yichang Ceramic Factory, including porcelain plate paintings, painting plates and small sculptures of figures and animals, etc. Except for a few works participating in the final exhibition, the remaining large boxes were directly shipped to the department by the manufacturer, and since then it has also been mud cattle into the sea, without a trace. In that era, deciding the fate of the work according to the verbal agreement became the price he paid to improve his profession. Fortunately, it has become common practice for young teachers to go out for further studies since then, and nothing like this has happened.
Shumoto's creation "Golden Grassland" in the Academy of Fine Arts I later saw several times, it was painted on four wooden boards, painted with oil painting materials, he deliberately used the dry mural suction oil painting method, which was well received by the industry when it was exhibited, and this painting was fortunately not confiscated and has been left in his hand.
During that time, we also went to Beijing together to see the "Hamer Tibetan Painting Exhibition". In the exhibition hall, he met Tomus, who showed great interest in Eugène Boudin's landscape paintings, especially comparing several works before and after the painter, from the rigor of the early days to the casualness of the later years; he was quite emotional, pointing to a small painting on the beach in Boudin with a group of characters with blunt pens and saying to us: "Look, let go in your old age!" The two of us looked at each other and smiled, and felt that Teacher Tou seemed to have found the basis for his own change of law. A few years ago, Shumoto also reached this age, and his paintings embarked on the same path of change.
As his teeth grew, he developed a strong interest in Chinese painting, and initially painted a stage of traditional landscape painting, and I had a small painting of his in my hand, stacked in a brown paper bag, as if it had been brought from Qingdao, and there were obvious traces of imitation of the ancients on the painting. I don't know when he began to draw horses on rice paper again, and over the years he drew hundreds of paintings, large and small, and as for why he painted horses, I did not ask him, probably because he had heard about it since he was a Mongolian. His horses have the style of Tang Dynasty tomb murals, plump and fat, and are not limited to the old formula in expression, but try to reflect their own opinions. There are both loose horses and galloping herds in these paintings, and from time to time one or two leisurely wranglers appear in the paintings; his horses are not stuck in the shape, but more grasp of its meaning and charm. Because of his early years of painting, he has always had a fondness for color, and likes to use colorful colors when painting horses, which has become a feature of him; and the color is often mixed with his favorite "old soy sauce" in the pigment, using the changes produced by the interpenetration of oil and water to make the picture add some meaning. Recently, he has painted a lot of abstract color ink, obviously inspired by the strange visual effects produced by the porcelain glaze during the kiln transformation when the porcelain was first fired, but this feeling was moved to rice paper.
Shumoto's attitude towards life is to be at ease with encounters, and sometimes it makes people feel that he is too tolerant of certain people and things. For example, in the process of reviewing a painting, there were two murals that were roughly the same, one of which was his painting and the other was the same painting attributed to someone else's name (because the mural did not have to be the original), and I called him to ask how to deal with it, and he said generously: "Let them all become collaborators!" The painting later participated in a national art exhibition and won the Sarina Prize of the Autonomous Region, and even the award certificate he received a few years later. Although he had engaged in a period of environmental art design, he failed to improve his economic situation, probably out of implicit tolerance for the account. In fact, no matter what he did in the past few decades, the essence has not changed, which reminds me of the old Tang dynasty saying"Danqing does not know that the old man is coming, and the rich is like a floating cloud to me." He seems to have come specifically for painting, walked in the crowd once, and after retirement, he regarded fame and fortune very lightly, and only indulged in what he was interested in. I mentioned in the old article that I wanted him to shrink his interest to a point, but his paintings have always been changeable, and maybe they don't look like him anymore.
This is what I know about Cai Shuben, an old friend I have known for many years, and a few things that can be talked about about by him.
November 2, 2020
(Audi: Former member of the Watercolor Art Committee of the China Artists Association, former vice chairman of the Inner Mongolia Artists Association, director of the Watercolor Pastel Art Committee, professor and master tutor of Inner Mongolia Normal University.) ）
Cai Shuben's artistic resume
His works have participated in the 7th, 10th and 11th National Art Exhibition, the First National Mural Exhibition, the First National Ceramic Wall Decoration Exhibition, the Chinese Modern Lacquer Painting Exhibition, the First National Environmental Art Exhibition, the Sino-French Friendship Year Digital Art Exhibition, the National Fine Arts Exhibition of the Great Unity of the Chinese Nation and other art exhibitions. Among them: the oil painting "Toast Song" is collected by the National Art Museum of China; the "2009 China Song • World Heritage Landscape Oil Painting Series Creation", the group painting "Wulong Karst" is exhibited and collected in the Beijing Museum; "Inner Mongolia Major Historical and Cultural Theme Art Works Creation Project", the oil painting "Yinshan Rock Painting" and "Xing'anling" are collected by the Inner Mongolia Art Museum. The oil painting "Grace" won the silver medal of the "First National Ethnic Minority Art Exhibition"; the oil painting "Silk Road" won the "Third National Ethnic Minority Art Exhibition" Excellence Award, and won the "Sarina" Award, the highest award for inner Mongolia's artistic creation, three times. He was rated as one of the Top Ten Outstanding Young Painters in Inner Mongolia.
He has been invited to visit Europe, the United States, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Mongolia and many cities in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan for art investigation and academic exchange activities, and in 2016, he went to Greece, Italy and Spain to carry out sketching and creation activities, and held an exchange exhibition of "Walking Colors - Cai Shuben Art Tour in Europe". In 2017, he was invited to Los Angeles and other places in the United States for academic exchanges and interviews with local media about the Prairie School. In 2018, at the invitation of the Connor Artists Association, he went to Denmark and Sweden to participate in the cultural exchange project of artists in residence and held the "Nordic Trip: Three-Person Exhibition"
Published four volumes of Cai Shuben's art collections, including Mural Painting, Pottery, Environmental Art, and Tree Painting Horse.