One hand reaches out to tradition, the other hand reaches out to life
Text/Liu Jiahao
The Chang'an School is a shining guiding light on the road of Chinese painting innovation, and its advocacy of "one hand reaching out to tradition, the other hand reaching out to life" is like a spiritual symbol influencing countless followers. The unique landscape paintings or figure paintings of many masters of the Chang'an School vividly interpret this spirit. As an inheritor and follower, while inheriting the tradition and having a contemporary breakthrough, while drawing nourishment from life, he must be able to capture inspiration and use his own unique brush and ink to reproduce the beauty and harmony between mankind and nature, he is the painter Cui Laizhou.
Image source: Member of the China Artists Association Cui Laizhou's own life photo
1. Be an artist of life
Cui Laizhou has loved painting since childhood, as an authentic Xinxiang person, Xinxiang's Taihang, Mingyue, landscape and pastoral have given him rich artistic energy, given him the layers of mountains in his mind, given him the instinctive pursuit of beauty in his life, and also bred his character as a painter. Cui Laizhou has repeatedly won awards in the highest level of national art exhibitions in the field of Chinese painting, and the theme of these works is inseparable from his hometown and Taihang. Mr. Wang Jinling, the leader of the Chang'an School of Painting under Cui Laizhou. His unique insights into life, tradition, and the art of Chinese painting had a direct impact on Cui Laizhou, and also made him understand that the real artists are not in books, not in the high pavilions, but in the streets and alleys, in the villages. Painters must look for the language and materials of painting creation from life. In the years of studying painting with Mr. Wang, Cui Laizhou has received many influential teachings from Mr. Wang Jinling, including wisdom in life, cultivation of painters, and knowledge of creation. These valuable assets laid a stronger foundation for Cui Laizhou's creation, and after decades of diligent efforts, Cui Laizhou's pen and ink were used more freely and more skillfully. Mr. Wang Jinling is the guiding light around Cui Laizhou, which guides him to explore the original and original rhythm of art, and boldly touch the authenticity of life and the authenticity of art. This bright lamp also lit up the fiery heat in Cui Laizhou's heart, touching nature and the spirituality of life.
Image source: "There is no one in the world who is not bitter" 50cm*50cm on paper
2. The inheritor of the spirit of the Chang'an School of Painting
The accumulation of the wind is not thick, and its negative wings are also weak. This sentence in Zhuangzi's "The Getaway" is about the fact that if the wind is not strong enough, then there is no power to carry the wings. External forces or opportunities are indispensable conditions for success. The Chang'an School painting exhibition held in Beijing in 1961 shocked the Chinese painting world with its magnificent spirit, new feelings and new concept of time, and was highly praised by mainstream media such as People's Daily and Guangming Daily. In the thematic creation and performance of revolutionary historical themes, realistic construction themes, and red landscape themes, the Chang'an School of Painting has accumulated rich experience in creative practice, integrating painting elements such as landscapes and figures, personifying landscapes, flowers and birds, and combining traditional Chinese landscapes that were not suitable for thematic creation after a new development and combining them with "new landscape figure patterns" to the theme content creation of Chinese paintings. Using new themes, new shapes, new brushs and inks to show the style of the new era is the artistic feature of the thematic creation of the Chang'an School. Cui Laizhou's opportunity is in the national art exhibition. The National Art Exhibition is the most authoritative and largest top-level exhibition in the Chinese art industry, and it is also a unique national art evaluation system. The National Youth Art Exhibition represents the mainstream cultural consciousness and aesthetic value judgment of society, and has the right to speak and the clear policy orientation of the Chinese government. In 2004, Cui Laizhou's work "Pine Sparrow" was selected for the first TV Chinese Painting Competition of the China Artists Association. In recent years, his works have been recognized, and in 2018, his work "Before court Mei Kai Happy Events" won awards in the "Jianghai Portal Through the World" National Chinese Painting Exhibition held by the China Artists Association, and in the same year, his work "Spring Sound Man" won awards in the "Harbin Biennale" of the China Artists Association; "Ode to the Homeland" was selected for the "Sacred Changbai National Chinese Painting Exhibition" of the China Artists Association, and in 2019, the work "Late Autumn Stories" was selected into the "Beautiful China - 24 Solar Terms National Chinese Painting Exhibition" of the China Artists Association. These works depict the vitality of life, full of the times and the local atmosphere. It is the accumulation of these years that makes Cui Laizhou enter people's vision, become a member of the Chinese Artists Association, and become the leader of the post-Chang'an school of painting. Cui Laizhou is fortunate, from the moment he studied with Mr. Wang Jinling, he was destined to have an inextricable and inseparable connection with the Chang'an School of painting, his artistic path, life encounters and artistic journey. Along with the strong influence of the Chang'an School in the Chinese art world, it also promoted the influence of Cui Laizhou in the Shaanxi painting world and even the Chinese painting world. The famous mainland philosopher Wan Junren (dean of the School of Humanities of Tsinghua University) wrote a poem for Cui Laizhou' painting collection:
"Man Ting Fang"
The floating world is chaotic, it is difficult to say things, and several Xi Pure Yan clear souls. The pond is full of withering, and there is nowhere to find lotus ping. The true color of The Spring and Autumn of China, according to who wrote, the qi rhymes like a god. Looking up, Yuzhou painters, still a fragrant fragrance.
From the poem, we can see Professor Wan's affirmation of Laizhou's paintings. Cui Laizhou was a payer of the Chang'an School of Painting. His freehand not only depicts a profound historical picture, but also depicts meticulous freehand scenes. His pen and ink are not yet carved, so as to be true and simple, natural, thick, ancient and dignified. Those ordinary scenes can look very interesting and intriguing after his portrayal.
Image source: Durian Figure, 68cm*137cm on paper
3. Cui Laizhou's artistic creation
Cui Laizhou's creative themes and pen and ink are related to the inheritance and method of learning, as well as their own observations, experiences and ideological tendencies. The Bada Shan people show people with white-eyed birds, and Qi Baishi takes pleasure in the clear taste of vegetable roots, all of which reflect their own special understanding and preference for a certain subject. In other words, which subject the painter chooses as his own breakthrough, as the subject of his own research, is often an active choice based on traditional excavation and self-identification. This also has a prominent performance in Cui Laizhou. Cui Laizhou painted peonies, taking Wu Changshuo's canghun dripping, combining the elegance and vividness of Ren Bonian to pursue the diversity of expression methods and effects. For example, "Flower Moon is Spring Breeze", which uses both line drawing, bonelessness, dot dyeing, coloring and other means to strengthen the contrast between dense and virtual reality, which is refreshing. Cui Laizhou likes to paint vines, and on this subject, he has the status of inheriting the past and the future. He inherited the pen and ink language of his predecessors, but he also has his own characteristics, which are mainly reflected in four aspects:
The first is to achieve accurate modeling with capital brushwork, concise and concise;
Second, the ink paving, rubbing, coloring, and blank space complement each other, and the virtual reality corresponds;
Third, the posture of wisteria is multi-terminal, which can awaken the artistic conception of the picture;
The fourth is to pay attention to the depiction of the environment and achieve the integration of the situation.
Cui Laizhou's innovation in the language of pen and ink is reflected in the following three aspects: first, in the form of pen and ink, the use of long lines and wide pens, vertical and horizontal, with distinct personal characteristics; second, in the connotation of pen and ink, the lines have a golden stone atmosphere, truly calm and painful, indulgent and convergent; third, in the image of pen and ink, more generalized and condensed, often using concise pen and ink can summarize the characteristics of objects. Cui Laizhou's creation is the need of society, but also the freedom of individuals. His works have a strong and unique personality, temperament, style, cultivation, and great vitality. In his freehand landscape Chinese painting creation, the spiritual qi seeks it with meaning, and the natural qi seeks it with pen and ink, which is both rational and sensual, making people feel the inner atmosphere. "Aspirations" is a painting by Cui Laizhou depicting the builders of the Taihang Mountain, the tower crane is erected on the majestic mountain, the tower is built, and the red tooling is struggling to climb under the mountain, and the craftsman is deeply related to the pulse of the times.
In every era, there are painters who are constantly trying to break through the previous generations. Zhu Yun, a bada mountain man, is an artist full of loneliness and sadness, and although his landscape has the characteristics of hardship and simplicity, he does not have a simple and rational grasp of the image of the landscape. The paintings of the Bada Shanren are free and unrestrained, and the priorities of the next brush and the thickness of the ink color reflect the intuitive judgment of the Bada Shanren at an instant. The tortuous development of undulating mountain stone structure form is not ordinary, is the image of the hill and ravine purified by the processing technology at the height of "beyond the image", and the essence of true similarity is obtained "between similarity and dissimilarity". Mr. Fu Baoshi said: "Because the times have changed, the feelings of life have also changed, and through the new life feelings, we cannot but boldly give new life and boldly find new forms and techniques on the basis of the original pen and ink techniques", so that our pen and ink can effectively express our praise and love for the new era and new life. In other words, it is impossible not to develop. This also shows the inevitability of pen and ink with the times. In the 20th century, an era of great changes and development, Mr. Qi Baishi presciently summed up the essence of Eastern and Western painting and his own life perception, saying: "The beauty of painting lies between similarity and dissimilarity, too similar is kitsch, and if it is not similar, it deceives the world." Mr. Li Keyan took the lead in walking into nature, on the basis of the ancients' "foreign teacher creation, the source of the heart", Mr. Li Keyan summed up the art of Chinese painting for thousands of years, and put forward the artistic insight of "the courage of the precious, the soul of the person who wants". The soul that Li Keyan refers to here is the artistic conception of the work, and it is also the roundabout expression of the artist's own soul.
Cui Laizhou lives in Xinxiang, the ravines of the Taihang Mountains have left him a lot of footprints, in recent years simply put the studio in slate and Baligou, physically and mentally integrated into the mountains, dialogue with the mountains, and contact with the water. The creative themes of freehand landscape paintings or flower and bird paintings are derived from life and nature, which is not only a simple record and transmission of real mountains and real waters, but a re-creation of the artistic conception of beauty. Mr. Shi Lu of the Chang'an School of Painting integrated sketching into the depiction of the times, put the artistic concept of facing life through the process of sketching, put the enthusiasm for the party, socialist construction and the people accumulated in revolutionary life into sketching, and presented the people's life picture and mental state in the background of the times in his works, and improved the aesthetic level of Chinese painting on the basis of popularization. He believes: "Where love goes, the golden stone is opened; where love is, it can shock the world and move ghosts and gods." Communication is a pipe for art to connect with life. "The writing has produced his perfect practice of absorbing Western realism techniques, and integrating the freehand spirit of traditional Chinese painting and aesthetic traditions." In his repeated speculation and expression of the spirit of the times, Shi Lu demonstrated the brush and ink form, composition and expression techniques of traditional Chinese painting, and made a useful exploration of how artistic creation can absorb nutrients from tradition and life to show the style of the times.
Image source: Walking in Bayankara, 68cm*68cm on paper
On the road of pursuing innovation in landscape painting, Cui Laizhou is the one who has the courage to explore, and "The Gathering Number" is Cui Laizhou's work commemorating the 70th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, with a clear theme. The depiction of scenery is based on northern Henan, with strictness and arbitrariness, subtlety in randomness; clear layers, between virtual and real; vivid and ethereal, freehand and realistic to achieve a perfect and harmonious unity.
As a painter, it is not enough to have a temperament, but also to have the ability to express ideas in order to complete their own works. "The expression of Chinese painting, based on life, is better than pen and ink", pen and ink are the characteristics of Chinese painting, and the combination of pen and ink is the essence of the artist's creation. Cui Laizhou's works have powerful brush strokes, and the bits and pieces of painting embody the power of life and movement, which is a concentrated expression of the painter's emotions and strength. Light and heavy, free and easy, is the beauty of the present.
"Tuguhun in the Distance" is a western style work of Cui Laizhou, the desert, poplar, snow mountain technique is unique and full of mystery, reflecting the painter's bold pioneering innovation and exploration. The artistic expression of the gods relies on the use of a pen, and when he writes in one stroke, the paper shows a change of thick, light, dry and wet. Both points and lines are strong and powerful, full of water and ink fusion of the sense of volume, the feeling of "bone" developed from this. In Cui Laizhou's paintings, this kind of pen expression is particularly profound, especially the strength of his large-scale freehand pen, paying attention to hiding ingenuity and clumsiness, and the black and white effect of splashing ink is more intense. In the process of creation, the artist's emotions, tastes, ink and mental operations blend together, whether the point or line is the organic unity of sensibility and reason, it will leave traces of emotion.
Image source: Tuguhun gone, 137cm*68cm on paper
The painter needs to experience life "obsessively", this "obsessive heart", not only with the love of nature, see what you see, remember what you hear, but more importantly, by the material will be the heart, push yourself and others to think of the wonderful, as well as for the achievement of artistic creativity, and the refinement and processing of life materials and personal experience, during which there is both the ambition of "not surprising and endless", but also the hardships of bald pens. Cui Laizhou's flower and bird works, the same theme often shows his process of constantly exploring new ideas.
The pen and ink language of Chinese painting is the unique artistic language of Chinese painting, which is incomparable and irreplaceable. In short, the strokes of Chinese painting reflect the correspondence everywhere, creating a unique realm and connotation in the correspondence, and using writing to reflect the beauty of the artistic conception. "Bone qi" is the root of the pen. Using pen, ink and line to create a reproducible image of Chinese painting must pay attention to the quality of "bone" and achieve the realm of "from shape to meaning". The brush and ink elements of Chinese painting are blended with brush and ink color to manage the virtual reality, distance and rhyme of the picture, express the artist's emotions, and is the natural combination of the painter's own inner intention and the natural object "elephant". Cui Laizhou is well aware of this truth, thus conveying his own spiritual style and aesthetic interests, and completing the natural process of "foreign teacher creation, middle gain". The "imagery" shaping with "wind bones" is the pursuit of the painter with the highest ideal state in the process of creative development. According to the theory of classical Chinese aesthetics, "wind bone" is a high degree of unity of individual thoughts and emotions. Under this premise, Cui Laizhou follows the principle of "imagery" modeling, taking objective objects as the object of attention, there are love and hatred, there are trade-offs, and pay attention to the integration between scenes. It is precisely because Cui Laizhou's landscape painting ink painting technique has reached the height of pure fire, he can easily control these core elements, do whatever he wants, and easily bring us into the rich and beautiful artistic conception he created. Freehand flower and bird painting has always paid attention to the obedience of physics to painting theory in the expression of objective objects, and expresses the life rhythm of the subject object by giving the passion of brush and ink, and shows the mood and interest of the subject object. True flower and bird painters know how to sacrifice the shackles of some objective objects to gain the freedom of expression of pen and ink and mind.
Image source: "Hot Land", 200cm*125cm on paper
All kinds of wind gods in objects need to be carefully experienced and captured by painters, and Cui Laizhou has cultivated accurate grasping ability and keen artistic feeling on the basis of various disciplines of art, thus providing rich soil for the creation of his flower and bird paintings. As Cui Laizhou showed in "Late Autumn Stories", writing form is to write God, writing form as a means, writing God for the purpose. Just as Mr. Pan Tianshou said to break the essence of Chinese painting: However, every time the people of the world divide the two forms and gods, strictly draw a ditch, and divide painting into two roads of realism and freehand, that is, the freehand school, the heavy god does not re-form, the realism school, the heavy form does not emphasize the god, the opposite, the argument is endless, and the unknown principle of the two sides is one, Tang Zhang Yanyuan's "Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties" Yun: "Ancient paintings, or can move their shape and still have their bones, to seek their paintings outside the shape, which is difficult for lay people. The painting of the present day is similar in shape, but the charm is not born. Seeking his painting with qi rhyme seems to be in between. Zhang's so-called "moving its shape" and "still its bone qi", that is, taking the shape as the body and the bone qi as the user. Zhang's so-called "seeking his painting with qi rhyme" is to use the bright body "and seem to be at ease, still two sides and one body. Zhang Shiyun: "The image of the husband must be similar, and the shape must be all its bone qi, and the bone qi and shape are all based on the intention and return to the pen." ”
Image source: "Spring Sound", 180cm*120cm Cui Laizhou
At the moment when Sino-foreign exchanges are very convenient, some of the modeling concepts of Western painting cannot but have an impact on the painters of Cui Laizhou's era, his flower and bird works have appropriate proportions and perspective, and can combine the sketching concept of Oriental painting, "Spring Sound" is a model of Cui Laizhou's integration of Chinese and Western in artistic concepts, plum blossoms are both traditional Chinese pen and ink elements, the picture is still an alloy of phoenix eyes and Western constituent elements. He impressed the judges of the National Exhibition with his new approach, new look and exquisite pen and ink language.
Cui Laizhou is a well-cultivated painter, and he will take a steady and far-reaching path in creation.
Author: Liu Jiahao, art critic
Secretary General of the Beijing Songzhuang New Federation