Written by | Qiu Shuwan
Source | Interface art
Located in the Cultural and Creative Park of Yunbao Future City, Songjiang, Shanghai, the Art BADAI Art Museum is currently exhibiting the "Struggle - Echoes of the New Chinese Years" red art theme exhibition, which is positioned as a red art classroom for 3.2 million teachers and students in Shanghai, which has received great attention from the education and art circles. Since the opening of the museum, it has attracted many young visitors to come to the exhibition to study. At the entrance of the exhibition, a large bronze sculpture nearly one meter and five meters high, with its hands clenched into fists and connected feet, is particularly eye-catching and has become the most popular punch card memorial.
Careful viewers will find that the name of the work is "The Creator", and the author is Professor Liu Shuyong from the School of Culture and Media of the Central University of Finance and Economics. But his other name, The Old Tree, is better known. In 2011, Liu Shuyong opened a Weibo under the name of "Old Tree Painting", and because of the unique charm of the painting sketches he shared every day, he quickly became popular on the Internet and was liked by many young people. In 2016, New Weekly awarded "China's Emerging Artist of the Year" to Lao Shu, and the award speech was "There are mountains and rivers in his paintings, so that people can use dreams as horses to find the peach blossom source in their hearts; there are daily and complaining, which makes people feel heart." He was not an academic, nor did he care whether his paintings were classified as new literati paintings or satin paintings, he abandoned the limitations of techniques and rules, but instead gained the joy and calm of free expression. ”
Screenshot from Old Tree Sina Weibo
In 2011, Weibo was opened under the name of "Old Tree Painting", and the number of fans in 2017 has exceeded 1.45 million, and the number of fans has nearly doubled to 2.56 million.
The style of painting that Lao Shu shares on a daily basis on Weibo
Liu Shuyong was born Chinese, and was the first student of Nankai University Ye Jiaying to return to China to teach. In the past three decades, his main research direction has been the linguistic form and media dissemination of images. In the mid-1980s, he devoted himself to the comparative study of visual language and narrative methods, did film criticism for six years, and wrote many "fifth-generation film" criticisms, and his rhetoric was fierce. In the late 1980s, he focused on Chinese calligraphy as a case study case, and compared the relationship between the Expressionist tradition in Chinese visual arts and the purification of Western abstract language. In the mid-1990s, he began to take photography as the main research object, focusing on the language form and classification principles of photography, and then turned to the development of contemporary Chinese photography and related problems in the process of image dissemination, and planned large-scale photography exhibitions and festivals, which had a great influence on the industry.
The old tree, which covers such a wide range of fields, began to study painting in the early 1980s. After twenty years, he picked up the paintbrush again, and it was not until 2011 that he had a social platform that he began to put his daily free creation works on Weibo for casual sharing, but he did not intend to insert willows and willows, did not expect more and more people to like, and then naturally assembled into a book and published a book. In a media interview, he said that "painting for me is more to entertain myself and relieve my daily anxiety" and "all this is at ease with the encounter, not deliberately." ”
In the summer of the Ugly Year, Lao Shu shared his painting "Lying Flat" on Weibo
And now placed in the art PATH Art Museum "Struggle" exhibition entrance, the style of this work is very different from his "leisurely and casual" painting style, said good "lying flat", how to turn around is "struggle"? And it's a sculpture you've never dabbled in before, so what's going on? Is it also a natural result?
In fact, there is a good story behind it. It turns out that this work originated from a painting manuscript he made in the 1980s. A few years ago, the founder of the Art Pathé Art Museum went to the home of The Old Tree to exchange ideas, stumbled upon the manuscript, was attracted by the shape of the hands and feet connected, and was moved by the sense of strength presented by the work, so he proposed the idea that one day the work could be presented in a special form. Lao Shu gladly agreed, expressing his happiness that the rhapsody work of thirty years ago finally had a destination, and proposed to guide the imaging of the manuscript throughout the process, so the two sides hit it off immediately, and after several rounds of production communication, finally there was this sculpture presented in the exhibition hall.
Manuscript of The Creator from thirty years ago
According to Lao Shu, when the manuscript was created, it was at the time of reform and opening up, China's integration into the process of globalization, and society was brewing a force in the midst of drastic changes. He felt that everyone around him was full of fighting spirit and full of hope for the future. At that time, when the young man had just graduated from college, he had a sense of the times in which he lived, so he had this painting idea: the connection of hands and feet means down-to-earth, and it is also a symbol of upward strength.
The Creator, a sculpture transformed from a painting manuscript
The charm of art lies not only in creativity, imagination and aesthetic power, but also in the infinite spiritual power it can bring to people. People who like old tree paintings read themselves from his works, as if they find a confidant, that is because the artist interprets the world with his heart, and it is naturally easy to empathize. And this "Creator" is exactly a kind of self-interpretation of the times by the old tree when he was young, and he is equally sincere and free. Now it has gone from a silent manuscript to being shaped into a sculpture, appearing in the red art theme exhibition of Struggle for more than three decades, a good story created by artists and collectors. At the same time, because the work has witnessed the great development of Chinese society in the past, to some extent, it also vividly interprets the profound meaning of the phrase "happiness is struggled out", which is the most appropriate spiritual symbol symbol symbol of the entire "Struggle" exhibition.
As a red-themed art exhibition, the exhibition "Struggle" visually reviews the party's century-old history, shows how generations of people have inherited the spirit of struggle, and achieved the great goal of standing up to getting rich and then becoming strong. The exhibition side hopes that after the exhibition is over, when everyone looks back at this sculpture again, they can feel another style of the old tree's new work, and at the same time, they can be edified in art, enlighten their ideas, continue the spirit of struggle, live up to their years, and become strivers in the new era. The exhibition will run until March 31, 2022.
About the Artist:
Liu Shuyong, Lao Shu, born in 1962 in Linqu, Shandong, graduated from the Department of Chinese and Chinese Literature of Nankai University in 1983, and is now a professor and head of the Art Department of the School of Culture and Media of the Central University of Finance and Economics. He has devoted himself to the research fields of visual language and representation, image communication, contemporary Chinese photography observation and criticism, etc., and has curated many important exhibitions and written dozens of books.
Exhibition time: September 12, 2021 - March 31, 2020, 10:00-18:00 (closed on Mondays)
Venue: Shanghai Art PATH Art Museum
Exhibition Address: Shanghai Songjiang District Wangjiapu Road 885 Lane Yunbao Future City Art and Creative Park