Xu Beihong
The Republic of China is multi-talented.
Similar to the hundred schools of thought in the Spring and Autumn Period, the culture of the Republic of China is also unique.
In the field of fine arts, ordinary people know Xu Beihong, but few people know Liu Haisu. Even hearing that Liu Haisu and Xu Beihong are not at odds, they will innocently ask, who is Liu Haisu?
In fact, Liu Haisu's reputation is not inferior to Xu Beihong's, but due to historical reasons, in the field of art, its light is only obscured.
Liu Haisu and Xu Beihong are both from Jiangsu, but the difference is that Liu Haisu was born in a well-bred shangjia family.
Liu Haisu
China's first academy of fine arts, Shanghai Meizhuan, was founded by Liu Haisu. Although the establishment of the Meizhuan has epoch-making significance, it arose because of Liu Haisu's escape from marriage.
After Liu Haisu escaped from marriage that year, he wanted to go to Japan to appreciate the art of painting on the other side of the ocean.
The father could not bear his son to cross the ocean, chased to Shanghai, funded a Shanghai Painting and Art Academy, the school site was selected in a rented Western-style building at No. 8 Zhapu Road in Shanghai, which is the prototype of Shanghai Meizhuan.
Liu Haisu, who has loved painting since childhood, has been praised by posterity for this experience, saying that he "created a precedent for Chinese art education." ”
The beginning of the establishment of the school was naturally arduous, in addition to preparing for teaching matters, it also published an enrollment notice in the newspaper. Due to limited funds, everything is simple.
The "Shanghai Academy of Graphic Arts" with handwritten books at the door is said to have been written by Liu Haisu by tying several brushes together.
Just when Liu Haisu and two classmates were full of ambition and wanted to make a difference, Xu Beihong, who was far away in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, was a different situation.
Xu Beihong's original name was Xu Shoukang, which is probably the meaning of Fushou Kangning. He came from a poor family and his father was a teacher. Although the ancestors were painters for two generations, they did not rank among the upper class.
Under the influence of his father, Xu Beihong picked up a brush at an early age, and he was quite talented in painting, and gradually he could paint some works to supplement his family.
At that time, whether it was the intersection of systems or cultures, the old things would not go away, and the new things would come in the future.
Various ideological trends collide and collide, and many literati with prescient knowledge are full of the cultural imprints of old China, but in their hearts they are pregnant with a cultural storm that has broken through the ground.
It is in this context of the times that Xu Beihong is extremely eager for Western painting techniques.
When he read in the newspaper that the Shanghai Academy of Graphic Arts was enrolling students, he was obsessed with going to a higher education institution, but he suffered from no tuition fees, and he could not raise money from his relatives and friends, because they themselves were too short to live.
It is said that at that time, Xu Beihong let out a long sigh, and he felt like a wild goose mourning, and the name "Sorrowful Hong" was born from this.
In 1912, after painstakingly raising money to come to Shanghai, Xu Beihong was full of expectations to enter the Shanghai Academy of Graphic Arts, but when he entered the campus, his heart was half cold.
The first is that the facilities here are so rudimentary that they don't have even the most basic plaster statues. I also saw a few new students, and then looked at Liu Haisu, who was the principal, who was one year younger than himself.
He couldn't help but sigh, can this also be called a school?
When the course began, his teaching level was questioned by him. As everyone knows, Xu Beihong, who has studied painting since childhood, has received a fairly professional professor from his father. He felt that the level of the teachers of the Academy of Fine Arts was actually inferior to that of his father.
Xu Beihong was deeply deceived, and two months later, he angrily left the academy. And his mood at that time, Liu Haisu was not at all aware.
It is said that at that time, Liu Haisu also deliberately looked for him for a long time.
This is the initial intersection of Xu Beihong and Liu Haisu, which is only known at present. And this has also become the fuse of discord between the two in the future.
On the right is Xu Beihong
Here pressed without table, the screen switches to 20 years later.
At this time, Both Xu and Liu had already gained a great reputation in the art world. Naturally, putting aside the factors of family background and temperament and interest, both of them have not shallow achievements in the field of art.
This can also be seen from the other side.
As we all know, in the field of culture, Cai Yuanpei's love for talent is obvious to all, he once braved the snow to ask Chen Duxiu to come out of the mountains to serve as the president of Peking University, and also tried to exclude the public opinion to hire Liang Shuming, who had no academic qualifications, to teach Indian philosophy at Peking University.
The list goes on and on. I will not dwell on it here. A brief explanation of the intersection between Xu and Liu and Mr. Cai.
In 1917, due to the strong recommendation of his teacher Kang Youwei, Xu Beihong's paintings came to Cai Yuanpei several times. Mr. Cai was very appreciative of him and hired Xu as a tutor of the Peking University Painting Research Society.
In the following year, thanks to the support of Cai Yuanpei and Fu Zengxiang, the chief of education, Xu Beihong was able to study in France for eight years, fulfilling his long-cherished wish for many years.
Painting by Xu Beihong
It can be said that without Cai Yuanpei, there would be no Experience of Xu Beihong studying in France.
Compared with Xu Beihong, Cai Yuanpei's interaction with Liu Haisu is deeper and longer, and he calls Liu Haisu's works "Hong Yue Deep Beauty".
The two take Shanghai beauty as a platform, for many years, work together, internally, the introduction of Western aesthetics, external, then export Chinese education, the two cooperation tacit understanding, can be called a good story.
On November 1, 1932, Zeng Jinke, editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine "New Era", published the "Preface to the Exhibition of Mr. Liu Haisu's European Travel Works", which roughly said:
Xu Beihong was a student of Liu Haisu, which was fortunate for teachers and students in the early years, because they met teachers like Cai Yuanpei to make their artistic talents well inherited and developed.
This theory alone has become the beginning of the two-person pen-and-ink confrontation and conquest for many years.
For the matter of being called a student by Liu Haisu, Xu Beihong had already heard about it. He just kept it silent, but when he saw that this statement was actually published in the newspaper, he felt that he couldn't bear it and wrote an article to clarify.
Liu Haisu painting
The article denounced the school that Liu Haisu ran at that time as a "pheasant university" and said that Liu Haisu "went west as a rogue and only learned to brag." ”
To this kind of statement, Liu Haisu naturally refused to admit his head. He replied in the newspaper, which probably means that the funds were scarce in that year, the Academy of Fine Arts was still in the early days of its establishment, and it was inevitable that it would be simple, but in the past twenty-one years, the artistic talents sent by the Academy of Fine Arts for domestic and foreign countries have been obvious to all, and it is not the likes and dislikes of one or two people that can be erased.
In the text, he also alluded to Xu Beihong as an "artistic gentleman".
Xu Beihong responded: "After ten years of hard training, I may no longer laugh at your bragging." ”
In this way, when Liu Haisu wanted to raise his pen and fight again, he listened to Cai Yuanpei's persuasion, and this round of engagement was stopped.
It is also reasonable for Xu Beihong to call Liu Haisu "diligent and virtuous, with hard work, and waiting for Ru for ten years" in the text.
Xu Beihong is a rigorous and pragmatic, steady and steady academic school, while Liu Haisu has not received systematic training in painting skills, and his realistic ability is far inferior to Xu Beihong.com.
The painter's natural and keen ability to perceive should be to smell this point, coupled with his early academic experience, so that he naturally has no good feelings for Liu Haisu, thinking that Liu Haisu, who has no deep skills, is just a way to skillfully take advantage of others in technique.
The reason why Liu Haisu is deeply involved in post-impressionism is that he must be aimed at his personal artistic interests, but he has to admit that there is an element of flattery.
However, to some extent, the coincidence itself is a kind of wisdom, and in terms of artistic attainment, it is precisely because it is not imprisoned by traditional techniques that Liu Haisu has been achieved.
I think he himself has a deep understanding of this. This can be seen in the text he wrote.
"On the other hand, the painters of our country have been imitating the painting schools of their predecessors all day long, or borrowing from each other to imitate. It is said that "the deeper the painter's kung fu, the more dull his method is; the more the painter bears the reputation of the times, the more the painting style becomes more and more distorted and beautiful'. ”
The persistence and deepening of art is actually an exploration and copying of the heart, and in repeated practice, Liu Haisu has found the core in his own art works, that is, personality and expression.
Not only realistic, but only presented. It doesn't matter whether it is realistic or not, it is just a natural creation with a big brain hole, and the creation is bound to be less restrictive.
For Liu Haisu, whose realism technique is not so profound, this may be one of the reasons why he chose splashed ink to show his works.
This artistic trend of large-scale, self-contained, free and arbitrary, and informal brushwork is also closely related to the rich life he has cultivated since childhood.
And this is something that Xu Beihong cannot understand. The painful experiences of his early years are all revealed in his paintings, which cannot be erased by any painting.
His work is weight-bearing, almost without exception. Whether it is a roaring war horse, or an oil painting of a huge figure, or a landscape or pastoral style, it always implies a struggle of "endless life and unceasing charge".
His painting style and personality are consistent, especially in the later period, he tended to use paintings to awaken the people's sense of struggle, and used European Renaissance works as a driving force to motivate his creation.
There is nothing wrong with painting for the power of awakening.
Xu is his childhood experience, in life, to fight against the oppression of poverty, the pursuit of freedom in life. In his youth, he resisted the invasion of foreign enemies and longed for a free land.
Perhaps, in the early days, he was tantamount to "using painting as a gun", but in his paintings, the element of freedom was not highlighted, but the taste of "confrontation" was everywhere.
His paintings are mostly based on trees and heavy stones for landscapes, while the movement of water is extremely rare. Sometimes there are such things as houses in the mountains, but the houses do not have the natural countryside of cooking smoke, but see the sense of desert in the field land.
Occasionally, there are light works of beautiful mountains and clear waters, just to have a little sense of the countryside, but I see the figures appearing in the field, carrying flat burdens, carrying baskets, and the weight of life jumps between the paintings, which is rare and relaxed.
Like an insurmountable graben, standing between Xu Liu, he regarded his natural splendor as a trick without learning or skill, just as he could not agree with how the fighting spirit of "majestic and vigorous" could be called art.
He could not know that the poor childhood experience had penetrated deep into his veins, and even the momentum of Hong Yue was forced out of the humiliation burden; and he could not understand that the life of the golden clothes and food had cultivated the agility and comfort that he was born with.
He and he, even shouting at each other, could not reach each other's ears. Because, they are people of two worlds, and it is impossible for them to intersect with each other.
In fact, in terms of art, Xu Beihong is inferior. Because art is art, art is not art for what.
Even if you don't look at the painting, just look at his personal temperament, you can get a glimpse of his heart.
Xu Beihong's photographs of his later years are more like that of a political commissar-level cadre than of an old artist. Through the idea of saving the country through literature and art, it has completely politicized itself and its works.
On the positive side, this has boosted the morale and made the spirit of the Chinese people forge ahead. But this is only the role of special periods.
As far as shenyong art is concerned, beyond this period, its value will not be so eternal, because art exists to touch the mind. And the heart of the heart is vast, and it is impossible to use the struggle as a background.
This was something that Xu Beihong, who had come from suffering, was unaware. His heavy forward movement is more like a historical mission.
Just like in those years, when he returned from his studies abroad, it was like turning the tide and pushing the lifeless realism to the peak.
"Profound and wonderful, hidden and majestic, walking alone in China, no coincidence." This is Mr. Kang Youwei's comment to Xu Beihong before his death.
His political leanings and Liu Haisu's are also in stark contrast.
Xu Beihong's personality is clear-cut. Black and white, while Liu Haisu is liberal, between the various doctrines and their politicians, it is more like wandering in the social field, left and right.
After liberation, Xu Beihong has established a unique position in the art world.
When the art community proposed that Liu Haisu be made the principal of the East China Academy of Fine Arts (i.e., Shanghai Art College, which was merged after liberation), Xu Beihong objected, writing to Zhou Yang, the minister of culture, calling Liu a "traitor" and citing relevant evidence.
The evidence shows that during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, when Shanghai fell, the Japanese flew Liu Haisu back to China. After returning to China, Liu Haisu interacted closely with the puppet Nationalist government, and the Japanese also participated in his wedding.
As far as these experiences are concerned, It is not unreasonable for Xu Beihong to elevate Liu Haisu's interactions with the Japanese to national integrity.
It is true that the specific incident is obvious to everyone, but the nature of its details is only known to the parties themselves.
It is said that when Shanghai fell that year, Liu Haisu hid in the oil mill, but he was still found by the Japanese, and the special plane sent him back to China was also abducted.
For the Japanese to appear at Liu Haisu's wedding, in fact, this is not what Liu Haisu is willing to do. However, at that time, the Japanese occupied Shanghai and wanted to use public opinion to create momentum for themselves.
It can be said that Liu Haisu was kidnapped by public opinion, and the Japanese took advantage of the momentum of public opinion to hold Liu Haisu hostage to their own side, which is not What Liu Haisu wanted.
As for the interaction with the Wang puppet government, the situation in China at that time was more complicated than the historical description. At that time, Liu Haisu, who could only say that his political tendencies were not very clear, was just unclear. Because, he has no heart for politics.
Of course, in the eyes of Xu Beihong, who has a clear banner, this reaction is understandable in the rhetoric of rising to national integrity. Because Xu Beihong's personality has always been sonorous and insistent, he would rather bend than bend.
However, if you really say that Liu is a traitor, it is also biased. From 1936 to 1937, he successively created paintings such as "Tiger Foot Map" and "Sihang Warehouse" to express his will to resist Japan.
Four-row warehouse floor plan
In 1939, Liu Haisu led teachers and students of Shanghai Art College to hold a charity sale of paintings and raise funds for the Children's Correctional Institution.
Liu Haisu's patriotic feelings were already very clear when he founded the Shanghai Academy of Graphic Arts, and his declaration of running the school was:
It is necessary to develop the art inherent in the East and study the mysteries of Western art. In a cruel and dry society, it is the duty to promote the art. Because art can relieve the troubles and pains of the Chinese people and awaken the dreams of Chinese.
The difference is that his intention is to take art itself as the main carrier, and the awakening he hopes for is to take the art as if to reach the other shore of enlightenment.
However, Xu Beihong's approach is to inject a certain ideological connotation into art, so that art can become a strong boost for the people's struggle, and in the general direction, rely on art to open people's sense of resistance and achieve national liberation.
This is naturally a patriotic feeling, but it also has the limitations of its times. Looking at time and space, art is art itself, without any political significance.
This is also why we look at Liu Haisu's paintings as a kind of shocking beauty, that kind of beauty, all the way to the depths of the heart, wash away the vulgar bones, and restore the copy.
Looking at Xu Beihong's paintings, it is a kind of primitive and thick power. Tough and dangerous, it is easy to conquer. In a specific historical period, this can be said to be Xu Beihong's merit.
Xu Beihong died in 1953 due to overwork in painting. Liu Haisu lived to 98 years old, which can be said to be a long and blessed life. The two did not reconcile until their deaths.
It is said that Liu Haisu has the intention of reconciliation, but Xu Beihong has never turned back.
Returning to art itself, it is good to give strength to others, and it is also a form of artistic expression, but in the end, it is not the ultimate art.
So what is the ultimate art? Soothe the soul, look at all kinds of things, and be aware of the world. If he had been born in the era of peace, he did not know that Xu Beihong would deny the same intention as the ultimate art.