It's a feast of color,
The random sprinkling of colors is full of imagination.
This is a special exhibition,
The protagonists of the exhibition are three orangutans.
Recently, the opening of the "We Are Not Fauvist" orangutan painting exhibition and the launch of the album of the same name were held at the Phoenix Art Museum in Nanjing Phoenix International Book City, and nearly 100 orangutan paintings played a bright color and abstract brushstrokes, revealing the most natural expression of emotion.
Painter
The brown-red fluff hunched long, soft and warm to the touch, is the cover of the new book "We Are Not Fauvists" Opening the furry book cover, there are holes in the book, and the paintings are abstract and vivid, bright and bright, making people feel the most primitive enthusiasm and warmth of life.
"We Are Not Fauvists" is co-edited by Shen Zhijun, director of Nanjing Hongshan Forest Zoo, and Zhu Yingchun, a well-known book designer, and published by Phoenix Fine Arts Publishing House. The book contains nearly 100 paintings by Leshen the "Bright Ape" and the orangutan couple Xiao Hei and Xiao Lu, and also records the tidbits of their creation.
The new album of the three "Mao children" LeShen, Xiao Lu and Xiao Hei in the family finally came out, and Director Shen Zhijun was excited and expressed his heartfelt thanks to everyone who had worked hard for the new book and exhibition.
He recalled the efforts made by red mountain zoos in the welfare of orangutans for more than a decade: in 2012, the orangutan house was renovated, giving them a wild-like free environment to climb trees, pick fruits and build nests at will; guiding them through scientific means to undergo a series of physical examinations voluntarily; improving the management level of orangutan keepers throughout the park... The opportunity for orangutan painting was the international symposium on orangutan breeding management held in 2018.
Under the advice of internationally renowned orangutan breeding management experts, breeders began to guide orangutan painting, and Leshen became the first orangutan in the country to paint. Guiding orangutans to paint, in addition to enriching daily life, can also make them "out of the circle" and become stars. Only when more people pay attention to it can the information and stories of protecting animals be passed on to more people.
Zhu Yingchun, another editor-in-chief of the new book, a professor at Nanjing Normal University and a famous book designer, said that he liked this new book related to art and special topics, and shared the creation story with everyone with the "Orangutan Cloak" cover as an example.
The original intention of the design of the furry book cover,
It's to be outside of "making books.",
Add some artistic qualities and creativity.
Because this picture book is not a regular book,
As the world's first orangutan album,
It has to be unique.
LeShen has a work with a tone (No. 050102A) reminiscent of the tone of a famous ceramic artist at Tsinghua University, which is quite elegant; Xiao Hei's work No. 284541B is very interesting, both like a morning exerciser squatting on a horse, and like a sweaty runner, moving like a rabbit, quiet as a virgin; Xiao Lu's no. 1810b8A+c4 work, in terms of composition, is strikingly similar to the "Dance" of Matisse, the representative painter of "Fauvism", of course, it is just a coincidence. If we discuss this issue from the perspective of art history, there is a sense of a solemn dream butterfly - who is fauvism in the end? This also forms a meaningful echo with the title of the book, "We Are Not Fauvists."
What exactly is art?
Can only human painting be called art?
The answer is given in the preface of the new book - human utilitarianism makes the painting process have a psychological burden, and orangutans can create freely by intuition alone when painting, zhu Yingchun feels that this is also the special feature that humans should learn from orangutan artists.
Orangutans
The most special guests at the exhibition,
There is no one more than Dou Haijing, the breeder of the three painters orangutans.
As a friend who spends time with the orangutans, Dou Jie tells the story of taking care of Leshen in the past twenty years, the history of Xiao Hei Xiaolu's love affair, and the story of the three artists learning to paint from scratch.
Le Shen is a naughty child in Dou Haijing's mouth, and she describes it in a Nanjing dialect that is "tired of being sad".
Leshen was born in 1999 at the Red Mountain Zoo. Because she had no experience in parenting, Leshen's mother abandoned it in the corner after giving birth. The keeper rescued it and sent it to the Nanjing Maternal and Child Health Hospital, the first case of a red orangutan raised in captivity in East China. That year, Dou Haijing had just come to work at the zoo, and the twenty-year relationship between them began.
LeShen was very naughty and small when he was a child, and he kept "escaping from prison", and Dou Haijing would get it back until June 5, 2019, when Leshen "released himself" as usual and drilled out of the power grid. The staff quickly found it, anesthesia hugged back, in the process of resuscitation, it died of complications caused by anesthesia pulmonary edema.
Dou Haijing would often nag about this naughty child, and LeShen would always listen to her quietly with her head down. "It can understand people's words", Dou Haijing kept every picture of Leshen's painting, "I think there are also words in the painting that he wants to say to me."
In 2014, 25-year-old Xiao Hei came to Hongshan from the Pingtung Ambulance Center in Taiwan, and the following year, 17-year-old Xiao Lu came to Hongshan from the Shanghai Zoo. When Xiao Hei first came, he couldn't understand Dou Haijing's Nanjing dialect, but he could understand the Taiwanese dialect.
Little Black and Little Law are a couple, they both belong to the Bornean red orangutan, Bornean red orangutan is one of the eight species of orangutans or Homo sapiens in the primate family, with a very high IQ, is the world's largest arboreal animal. Orangutans are extremely agile and can jump back and forth between trees, and the Malay language calls them Orange utan, which means "man in the forest". In 2016, Leshen was identified as a hybrid of Sumatran orangutans and Bornean orangutans.
Behavioral training for orangutans,
Or let the orangutan draw,
The root cause is still
Orangutans are so different from other animals.
Orangutans like to play, like to explore all kinds of things, breeders will make them toys, at first they can play with it, and over time, they will think that this thing is very simple. "This highly intelligent animal, they have more emotional needs and behavioral expression needs." Shen Zhijun said. In order not to let the orangutans get bored and enrich their lives, many zoos abroad will teach the orangutans to draw.
How do orangutans draw?
Their studio is a behavioral training display area outside the orangutan gym, and the keeper is their art teacher. The orangutans would point their fingers at their favorite colors, and the keepers would dip the paints on the white paper and hand them pens, and then it would be time for the orangutans to make art.
"Some adults are particularly afraid of painting, thinking that painting is a very noble and mysterious thing that only artists can do. Orangutans tell humans not to be afraid of drawing, not to feel that the threshold is too high, you can pick up a pen and swing it on the paper, like an orangutan without a little utilitarianism. In the process of designing the album, Zhu Yingchun seemed to see the inspiration that orangutans brought to humans.
If the album has benefits in the future, Shen Zhijun hopes to increase the daily welfare of the orangutans, and take out a part of the money to train orangutan keepers. There are only a dozen zoos with orangutans in the country, and the number of orangutans is about 50, "we can train their keepers and design venues for them." ”
Zhu Yingchun said that "We Are Not Fauvists" is just his first book with the Red Mountain Forest Zoo, "and there are two more books, one about bears and one about stories between keepers and animals." We hope to convey more information about animals to the public, cultivate people's empathy, and care for and respect every life. ”
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