Source: Guangming Daily
Fishing village Yang Xianrang
Nostalgia No. 9 Yang Xianrang
Daqing Huishi Yang Xianrang
【Yihai Shuying】
"Folk art is very important, and when I think of the vast sea of traditional Chinese folk art, I have only one idea, that is, we must protect them."
When it comes to the protection, research and inheritance of traditional folk art in New China, Yang Xianrang is an unavoidable name. As one of the first batch of artists trained by the state since the founding of New China, he participated in the establishment of the Folk Art Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and let the folk art enter the room; he led the expedition team to go through twists and turns, went in and out of the Yellow River Basin 14 times, immersed himself in the investigation of traditional folk art, published the inspection results "Fourteen Walks of the Yellow River", and walked out of the solid research foundation of the Folk Art Department; he adhered to the creative concept of "art for the people", worked hard in many art fields, and created a large number of masterpieces of the times. He has made outstanding contributions to the development of Chinese contemporary art and the inheritance of Chinese culture. In view of Yang Xianrang's contributions in the field of traditional folk art, he was selected as the 2020 "Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Person of the Year".
In 1930, Yang Xianrang was born in Yangma Island, Yantai, Shandong, and many of the fine art works collected by his father when he was a child became his first artistic enlightenment. In 1948, Yang Xianrang was admitted to the National Peking Art College, where he studied under Xu Beihong, Sun Zongwei, Jiang Zhaohe, Li Ruinian, Feng Faqi, etc. Four years of professional training laid a solid foundation for him to realistic modeling. After graduation, he was assigned to work at the People's Fine Arts Publishing House, and Yang Xian's excellent modeling ability was quickly developed, and his first chromatic woodcut work "Out of the Circle" won an award at the 1957 National Youth Art Exhibition, which gradually made him a representative of the young generation in the 1950s printmaking team. In 1960, after being transferred back to his alma mater, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, yang Xianrang began to focus on printmaking, during which he created works such as "Daqing Huishi" and "Portrait of Liu Hulan", which adopted realistic expression techniques and full of romantic poetic meaning, becoming a classic of the times. His love affair with traditional folk art begins with an experience of visiting relatives.
In the early 1980s, Yang Xianrang visited and visited many famous schools and museums on his way abroad to visit his father. What impressed him most was the importance these cultural institutions attached to the original ecological art in contemporary academic research and display. The value of many local folk arts has been fully excavated and reproduced, which has inspired Yang Xianrang to re-examine China's colorful traditional folk art. After returning to China, with his active efforts, the Folk Art Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts came into being.
Inviting Chinese folk artists into the classroom of the Academy of Fine Arts and disseminating the essence of traditional Chinese folk art was undoubtedly a "new thing" for the academy at that time. In order to explore the source of Chinese culture, Yang Xianrang led the team to visit the Yellow River Basin, an important birthplace of Chinese civilization, to investigate many folk arts such as New Year paintings, paper cutting, cloth tigers, embroidery, shadow puppets, face flowers, faces, etc., covering 8 provinces and more than 100 counties and towns along the Yellow River, and finally presented to the world the emperor's monumental work "Fourteen Walks of the Yellow River", which is an extremely important investigation record of traditional folk art in the Yellow River Basin.
After the 1990s, Yang Xianrang devoted a lot of energy to the creation of painted works. On the basis of traditional Chinese ink painting, series of works such as "Nostalgia", "Spring and Autumn in a Small Town" and "Home Gate" integrate the realistic techniques of oil painting, the formal language of printmaking and the mottled texture of murals to create a unique painting style. The ancient walls of the bell tower, the town streets, the alleys of hutongs, and the wooden lattice doors, windows, and stone tile roofs in traditional Chinese residential buildings are all sources of inspiration for Yang Xianrang's creation. In his own words: "Painting always has to have some of its own characteristics, distance itself from others, use traditional Chinese brush and ink, paint Western light and color realistic objects, and add a little printmaking line effect, four different, it is called 'painting'." ”
Today, Yang Xianrang, who is more than ninety years old, is still intoxicated with art creation, and this dedication has always run through his artistic life, as he wrote in a self-statement: "I myself never thought that I would go to the road of shouting for traditional Chinese folk art, and seeing that some traditional folk arts will disappear, I have a sense of responsibility and see the direction, which is all my feelings, I have no regrets." ”
(Reporter Rong Chi)