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He is by far the most valuable Chinese painter, he is known as the human flesh printer, he spent a year to create a work, worth up to 80 million, he is the first person in the Chinese super painting school, the skin texture, clothing fibers, pores and hair in the painting can be delicate, the details displayed again and again shocked the world!
So who can have such outstanding achievements, what kind of environment has made such a master, and whether his works are god's work or scum?
Today's topic: Cold Army
Leng Jun, born in 1963 in Sichuan, China, graduated from the Hankou Branch of Wuhan Normal University in 1984, and is now working at the Wuhan Academy of Painting, a national first-class artist and the leader of contemporary Chinese hyper-realistic oil painting.
When he was a child, Leng Jun did not go through a day of formal art study, he did not learn to draw from an early age like other children, at that time there was a state-run cinema near Leng Jun's home, and he was always in a daze at the movie poster, because he was shy, he did not dare to paint in public, so he carefully observed the poster in front of the movie theater, remembered the details of the place, and then went home to paint. In order to paint a paper tiger in the art factory, he walked every week to see the painting, desperately writing it down, going back and forth several times, just to copy it more realistically.
Leng Jun said: "When I was a teenager, I didn't paint a lot, but like a demon, I always thought about how to paint, so the things I drew were also slowly improving."
It is this kind of enchantment that makes him have super high requirements for paintings, do not let go of any details, and after entering the Hankou Branch of Wuhan Normal University in the 80s, the control of painting details is even more exerted to the extreme, or a kind of madness!
It took 9 hours a day to paint a square centimeter, only one work a year, and the achievement of this almost perverted persistence was out of control after the award in 1991.
In 1993, his work "Cultural Relics - New Product Design" came out, everyone said that this is Leng Jun's representative work, and in 1995, "World Landscape No. 2" once again became a milestone in Leng Jun's works, in 1999," "Five-pointed Star" won the gold medal of the Ninth National Art Exhibition, and in 2007, the emergence of "Xiao Luo" shocked the history of Chinese art. So Leng Jun's works always seem to be surpassing themselves!
80.5 million! Is it worth it?
Onado da Vinci," Mona Lisa's Smile
This is the oil painting "Mona Lisa's Smile" created by Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci, which is valued at more than $3 billion, and then look at Leng Jun's painting called "Mona Lisa - About the Design of Smiles"
Leng Jun, "Mona Lisa - About the Design of Smiles"
From the name, it seems that there is a suspicion of copycat or rubbing hot spots, but it is such a hyper-realistic painting created by Chinese, which sold for 80.5 million yuan at the Guardian auction on May 21, and once again set a new record for the sale price of Leng Jun's works.
The Mona Lisa – Design for a Smile is the most famous of Leng Jun's hyper-realistic portraits, using deep black as a background to present a smiling oriental woman on the basis of the classic long-scroll composition of Chinese painting.
Although the name of the painting has the words Mona Lisa, it is clear that this painting has nothing to do with Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, perhaps Leng Jun is paying tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, or perhaps telling the world that the "Mona Lisa" smile can appear on different people. When we zoomed in to 20 times to observe the painting, the details are shocking, as delicate as the photos taken by a high-pixel camera, do you think such a painting can be called a god work?
This painting is called "Green Girl Little Ginger", as early as 2011, it sold 70 million prices, "Little Ginger" is also one of the representative works of Leng Jun's ultra-realistic painting, the work is 60cm long, 120cm wide, and in 2019, it set a personal record at a price of 70.15 million, in the work, Xiao Jiang concentrated on contemplation, the space of the sweater, the girl's snow-white skin loomed, the girl's delicate hands were placed at the waist, the beauty of the classical girl was presented to the fullest, to say that Xiao Jiang, this character is also really there. But he is neither a model, nor an Internet celebrity, she is a real migrant girl, it is said that Leng Jun is extremely serious when creating, and Xiao Jiang can't stand a long period of meditation, in the middle of the creation, Xiao Jiang chose to leave, and Leng Jun took out his housekeeping skills at this time, through the dummy and the imagination of the brain to complete the painting. And this is only one of Leng Jun's "Portraits" series, which also includes "Xiao Luo" and "Xiao Wen".
There are many people who say that there is no difference between such a painting and a printed photo, it is meaningless, just technology, no art, but Leng Jun said, "The color of the photo is never as real as the color of the sketch!" When making this video, I also thought about whether a painting is really worth so much money, even Ma Yun wants to pocket it, the fact is that people really sell it for tens of millions of dollars, and the buyer must think it is worth it!
Hyperrealism!
We temporarily define Leng Jun's paintings as hyperrealism, but Leng Jun denies that his paintings belong to hyperrealism, so what is hyperrealism?
Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture whose style resembles high-resolution photographs, with works that pay more attention to detail. Hyperrealist paintings and sculptures are not strict interpretations of photographs, nor are they text illustrations of a particular scene or subject. Instead, they utilize subtle pictorial elements to create the illusion of reality that does not actually exist or that cannot be seen by the human eye. The pieces are usually compact and delicate, with clear lines and highlighting the point!
At the end of the 1960s, the United States led the world in modern art, and the works created by Leslie, Cross (painting), André, Hansen (sculpture) and others were almost as realistic as fake. Over time, the level of their paintings has become more and more refined, and this realistic style has gradually become a trend. They have also become representatives of this genre!
And Leng Jun, known as the leader of the creation of China's hyperrealism school, but does not admit that he is a hyperrealist writer, then can we understand it in this way, Leng Jun subconsciously believes that hyperrealism is actually copying photos, there is no meaning, so he must keep a certain distance from the word "hyper-realism", thinking that he still belongs to the traditional painting school, and the meaning of his painting is not what everyone calls copying photos!
Since the birth of photography, the recording function of painting has been stripped away, so painting has become pure, and people can add more emotions to painting and become a tool to express their feelings. Leng Jun denies that his paintings are surreal, and joining surrealism is to copy photos, so let's see if this sentence is true in the end.
Take "Little Ginger", even if the green sweater, the face of the acne visible to the naked eye, but placed under the machine will be exposed, the difference between color, hue, purity is even greater.
According to modern technology, our ability to reproduce things is sorted, 3D scanning (99%) is greater than photography (95%) is greater than printing, printing (90%) is greater than hyperrealism (80%) is greater than realism (70%), and this standard is relative to top works,
Previously, we thought that hyperrealism is a copy of reality, but after relevant experiments, it was found that in fact, it is not, as long as the standard of reproduction is adjusted to millimeters, it can be distinguished that hyperrealism is not to copy reality, but to create details with the help of reality.
So the conclusion is that hyperrealism is closer to reality than realism, and it is completely impossible to reproduce and copy, and hyperrealism is indeed expressing one's subjective emotions on the basis of high precision!
The meaning of painting
Since Daguerre invented the first daguerreotype camera in 1839, modern art has undergone earth-shaking shocks, and the cloud of "what is the meaning of painting" has been overwhelmingly shrouded in the sky of art, and the influence of classical art is actually in the moment of the emergence of photographic technology, it will inevitably decline, which is the footstep of the times!
Today, classical art is actually on the decline on a global scale, but this point is relatively not easy to perceive in China, because China began to absorb Western art late, so it is still in a "make-up" stage, by observing the evolution of Western modern art genres: Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstraction, we find that today's domestic art seems to miss almost all links, Domestic art academies still put classic art in the main position, and Leng Jun may only fill a small part of most of our gaps.
Leng Jun's works, whose unique conception combined with extraordinary artistic skills, are the opposite in today's Chinese painting world and even the world, and the biggest feature of his works is extreme realism. In front of his paintings, the viewer is impressed by the subtle images and techniques of his paintings.
It can form a comprehensive tension in the mind of the viewer, and the soul is strongly shaken!
Van Gogh once said: Nothing is immortal, including art itself. The only thing that is immortal is the understanding of man and the world that art conveys!
So how do you understand the Cold Army? For his work, do you think it is a god work or a mess? Is it worth 80.5 million?
I'm Nobita, here's a curious bookmark and look forward to interacting with you in the comments section!