In the process of magnificent urbanization, how do Chinese landscape paintings that originated from agricultural civilization represent modern cities? The "Under the City - Over there Landscape Sea Four-Person Exhibition", which ended yesterday in Qianhe Art Space, made a useful exploration. Curated by Xu Mingsong, this exhibition exhibits more than 30 works by He Xi, Hong Jian, Bai Ying and Shao Qiong. The four Shanghai painters construct their "visual city" and "beyond the city" with their own ideals, their painting styles and expressive themes are different, and their works have different aspects, but they all express their observations and memories of the city, and the tone is closely related to shanghai urban culture. It is worth mentioning that whether or not shanghai is directly represented, various reasons for liking the city can be seen from these works. To this end, two art dialogues were held during the exhibition, inviting industry experts to talk about the relationship between people and cities, as well as observations and reflections on urban culture and other profound topics.
The reporter saw that although the reasons why the four artists like Shanghai are not the same, they have similarities. People of different ages, people living in different neighborhoods, can find resonance in the painting. Take Hong Jian, a painter at the Shanghai Academy of Chinese Painting, as an example, who likes to paint Shanghai's architecture, the old buildings in Shanghai's west district with a romantic or some kind of sad atmosphere, and his paintings of the old city box in the city center reveal a kind of memory and sigh. "Shanghai's urban history and culture have a very unique charm, vitality and even magic. Although I depict more specific buildings and street scenes, I want to express the spiritual temperament and cultural connotation of the city. Hong Jian said.
In the view of Xu Mingsong, the curator of this exhibition, in Hong Jian's Shanghai story, we can see the painter's affectionate look back at the history and present of the city. He is good at rendering a layer of emotional color and literary imagery for clean and neat pictures, seeking and constructing a "scene aesthetic" that allows Shanghai's past and present to intersect in painting. "There is no one in his work, but we can feel the presence of man."
"I came to Shanghai from Beijing when I was five or six years old, and it was the city that made me what I am today." Artist He Xi said. In the "Specimens" series, he imitated the techniques of Ni Yunlin, Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, Wen Zhengming and others, placing their landscapes, flowers and birds independently in glass jars. In fact, many of his works have a symbol, glass, which represents the artist's view of the relationship between people in the city, and in Shanghai, people-to-people interactions are measured.
Born in Shanghai and raised in Shanghai, Bai Ying is a professor of chinese painting at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, and he has turned his familiarity and thinking about the city into observation and expression of women in the city. His urban women penetrate a sense of alienation from life, they move, wander and swing between fashion and classical, secular and ultra-modern, and convey metaphors and symbols of the image of the city.
Although Shao Shujiong, an associate professor at the School of Fine Arts of Shanghai Normal University, paints the most traditional landscape paintings, he respects the classics and does not indulge in the myths of the classics; he is an apprentice with the ancients and stands firm in the position of the present; he interprets the classics and then interprets them with his own ideas. He doesn't set limits on himself, and is as open and inclusive as the character of the city. Therefore, in his works, there is a sense of distance and separation that transcends and eliminates time, allowing the viewer to return to the present while escaping into the vast time and space.
"None of these four painters followed the old path, and the influence of postmodern art on them can be clearly seen in their works." Wang Yonghao, vice chairman of the China Literary and Art Critics Association and chairman of the Shanghai Literary and Art Critics Association, believes that it is no longer enough to deal with art according to the traditional number of paths, and life gives artists more ways to express their emotions. We should encourage more painters to make new attempts on the basis of traditional brush and ink, which is where the inclusiveness of the city of Shanghai lies.
Author: Li Ting
Edit: Jiang Fang
Editor-in-Charge: Xuanjing
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