From October 23 to 26, 2014, Zhang Jie held her first oil painting exhibition at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, when she had not appeared in the literary world for a long time, and when she took the stage to give a speech, Zhang Jie shook her hands and said "Zhang Jie said goodbye to this", but now she has really left us. Specially published comments by Tie Ning, Li Jingze and Nishikawa on Zhang Jie's paintings as a commemoration.
I see how feminine Aoyama is
Text | Iron condensation
I first met Zhang Jie from her literature. From "Picking Up the Ears of Wheat" to "No Words", her literary career of nearly 40 years, her natural beauty, sensitivity, and elegance, her pure and pure narration talent with a subtle sense of rhythm, her hard-hitting depiction of human nature, suffering, love, betrayal, ideals, hopes, vulgarity, and innocence, is so impactful that even if the short prose written 30 years ago is read again 30 years later, my chest is still hot. In her most important works, her broad and strange vision of reality, history, nation, revolution, society and culture, decent and unique insights, and the keen expression and indomitable retrospection of "more true children" are all respectful. Her literature is always the literature of the presence of the soul, she is like ice and fire, delicate and straightforward, "dull" and sharp, spicy and fragile, lonely and humble, it is an irreproducible weather, a kind of mottled desire to say goodbye. I asked myself: Do you really know this "child from the forest"?
Later, I met Zhang Jie from her photographic works. The book "Stray Old Dog", published not long ago, has more than 100 photos taken by Zhang Jie traveling alone, accompanied by the text she wrote for these photos. Zhang Jie does not call these photographs photographs photographs, nor has she ever equipped herself with professional photographic equipment, and there is only a "fool" camera in her simple bag. What she likes is walking itself. "Some people are born to walk. They walk to find. What they are looking for, they themselves may not be very clear, perhaps to find the place of the heart, or to find the place of the soul... Only when he was walking, when he tapped the earth with his own footsteps, like a geological team member using a small hammer in his hand to probe the underground treasure, to listen to the whispers, breathing, and secrets of the earth, or when his pupils were focused on Tianyu, and tried to cross Tianyu and read the book of heaven behind Tianyu, would his heart be quiet. Zhang Jie said. Therefore, Zhang Jie's shooting is simple and innocent, free and relaxed, and humorous and cheerful. The infiltration of literary creation, artistic accomplishment and aesthetic taste makes her lens have a natural enthusiasm and interest in simple landscapes. And her conscious choice and capture of composition and light seem to have been professionally trained. She photographs wooden chairs with peeling paint on the platforms of old railway stations in Europe, buses about to enter the station, small town churches, country inns, street lamps, old houses, toilets, horse rings, "trees with high self-esteem", Pompeii, book kiosks in the snow, male and female stakes in the amazing firewood-splitting piles, and the common momentum in small corners. She photographed the white waves on the Spanish coast, the forests of Germany, and the marble podium of the old Olympic stadium in Greece. She confessed: I like the taste of those old and strong. Despite the ruin, it is still calm; although it does not have the glitz of the world, it exudes a long atmosphere of history and culture everywhere. Such a liking also makes people understand why she would name a stone-made arched empty window with broken windows as "silent deterrence". A fairytale-like carriage on the streets of Warsaw, carrying a beautiful wooden box with carved iron ornaments, turned out to be the city's ordinary garbage truck. Zhang Jie let the reader see such an artistic garbage truck, and she also extended the lens to (she often lamented that because the machine is a "fool", she could not "stretch" the camera more ideally) like a giant lion hugging a mountain rock with people, and there was a group of seemingly sharp and cold boulders caring for a palm-sized grass under her feet. In one photo, two praying mantises in love in the grass, Zhang Jie photographed the momentary irritation of their sense of being disturbed—a once-in-a-lifetime insect expression that reminded me of Fabre's magical depiction of a slender, fierce mantis in Insects. This independent and unruly walker, Zhang Jie, originally had such a humble care for the little creature, otherwise, why would she not forget the few sheep that had given her pure gaze in the mountains for a long time. On the high hills there is her every long-distance pursuit, and if the heart guides her to crawl in the grass, she will not be perfunctory. I asked myself: Do you really know this "child from the forest"?
The new acquaintance with Zhang Jie began with her paintings. If photography is her pleasure, she can do whatever she wants, but painting is seen as her second profession. She chose oil painting and studied with professional painters, which shows her solemn attitude. This is a bit risky, but it is in line with Zhang Jie's personality. She has said that she does not like to repeat others and herself artistically, and even dislikes the "freeze frame" of style. This requires bravery and strong action, and requires a superior artistic sense and shape-making ability, and these Zhang Jie are not lacking. In the winter of the past two years, when Zhang Jie returned to Beijing from the United States to stay, I visited her apartment. In the few empty rooms that have been emptied but still exude elegance, the strong smell of canvas, latex, oil paint and toner is pervasive. A pine easel is propped up in the center of the former study, and on the shelf is a newly outlined new painting. In the rest of the room, there are paintings of her on the walls. Sometimes she wears a dark blue kaji cloth overalls stained with oil paint to meet guests, which makes me wonder if this is zhang Jie, who is strict and picky about the details and tastes of life, who has so many "graceful" times, and has won dozens of awards and honors at home and abroad. I looked at Zhang Jie, who was no longer young in front of me, she was free and calm, an art worker with no distractions, and her face was glowing with the old ivory-like brilliance that only young people did not deserve to have, and it was really "luxurious and pure". She is no longer a flower, she is more like a nut: moist, deep, strong, pure. I think of the former Soviet union famous ballet artist Ulanova, why at the age of nearly 60 can still play the young girl Ovilita in "Swan Lake", which is due to her inability to defeat the skill and skill, but also she has seen and tasted the flowers and flowers, so that she is qualified to more accurately and deeply interpret the brilliance and dazzling of the flowers, the bitterness and awe of the flowers.
I didn't ask Zhang Jie why she studied oil painting so hard, and I thought it was stupid to ask such a question. She has inadvertently revealed in the book that the harvest of photography is that she stepped into the colors that others could not see. Painting is not like this, I think Zhang Jie's heart is happening in the scene that must be described by painting. Most of her paintings are unnamed, and the selection of materials is not constrained, unlike some professional painters such as Cézanne, who have painted so many victor mountains in their hometowns in their lives. Zhang Jie is more concerned about the fleeting strong touch or vibration that the object of the painting initially gives her. Although she does not seem to have been influenced by too many "genres" or "isms", Zhang Jie is obviously more inclined to expressionism than realism. She paints deep water, clouds, birch, old houses, old cars, sunsets, and also women, sacred horses, snow leopards, and distant mountains. There is a female head with a composition that is "out of the ordinary", which I call oil painting freehand: a spotless sky blue background occupies most of the picture, waiting for the intrusion of a woman's side face with concise lines and no superfluous details. Her waxy complexion, slightly drooping eyelids, and insight-like detachment seem to be some kind of leak to the author's mood.
A frame painted on a leopard in 2008, I'd like to call it a female snow leopard. The snow leopard is looking back, surrounded by satin-like bright and sharp broad-leaved grass. The graceful curves of the flexible, firm neck and slender, well-built body are lined with a dazzling background of rich layers of orange and yellow, making the whole picture full of elastic tension. The snow leopard in the backlight, when its neck is illuminated by a side light, the part that the author intends to highlight glows with a lilac nobility. Then you will be attracted by the eyes of the snow leopard: arrogant, alert, and full of moist melancholy, a self-esteem that does not disturb the same kind or humans. I was struck by the look in the leopard's eyes, and the strong subjective portrayal instantly connected the communication between animals and people's hearts. Compared with the "freehand" side-faced woman, there is an inexplicable god resemblance to this snow leopard in soul and temperament. In Zhang Jie's paintings, there is an innate equality and trust between people and animals, animals and landscapes. In the landscape of her heart, perhaps animals are more human-like than human beings. I can't say what height this work has reached artistically, but I can say that Zhang Jie has shown the sharp vision, expressive ability and rebellious heart that she must have as an artist. Her paintings often boldly use orange yellow, orange red, orange yellow and other colors, and there are also large areas of green into the painting, which confirms her conscious training and control of color. Yellow and green are the most easily "dirty" colors in oil paint, and Zhang Jie presents the audience with a warm clarity and clear richness.
I also like the "door", although Zhang Jie thinks it is not her favorite work. An old open door, a half-closed white window, and two empty rooms with a sense of depth are separated by a pale gray door frame in the center, so that the picture is interwoven into a perspective relationship that is both staggered and stable. I like it not because it's empty, it's because the painter can express the emptiness so fully. The contrast between the old gray cement floor and the orange-red and rust-red walls outside, the contrast with the sea-blue walls inside, and the several pieces of lime color on the maroon door panels all make non-dazzling jumps. Most of the empty room is covered by the door frame, because of the penetration of a soft light, which suddenly brings people visual attachment, and all the color arrangements are thus active, just as there is no color without light. And the smell of every corner of the room is also stirred, the old door of the empty house, the mysterious breath of a house, the place where the story ends, in the eyes of different audiences, how many different beginnings will be induced.
I once heard the saying that painting is silent poetry, and poetry is sound painting. I have reservations about this metaphor, which easily confuses and dilutes the independent artistic value of literature and painting. For example, some "episodic paintings" in Russian art are often subject to too much literary "bondage", and what the painter strives to complete in those works should be left to the writer to do. Chagall once said: "Paintings often hide more words, silence and doubt. These words, once uttered, weaken essential things and lead people to other paths. The intervention of Cubism and Abstraction in art history confirms the above. It changes perceptions and the way the world is observed, liberating the limitations of what people perceive. Painting is painting, poetry is poetry, if poetry is already a painting with sound, Zhang Jie will no longer have the impulse to pick up a paintbrush. What can't happen in a writer's pen can happen in the pen of an eclectic painter. This is the charm of painting, and why there are good writers who have to temporarily put aside literature and pick up a paintbrush. It was an instinct for life that was not mixed with water, a breathtaking and energetic artistic talent. Within the confines of the canvas and frame, her paintings, literature and photography are freely echoing.
"I see how feminine Qingshan is, and I think Qingshan should be like this when he sees me." Reading Zhang Jie's paintings, I will think of a good sentence by Xin Renjie. There are people who admire each other with nature and have the joy of the world. Zhang Jieru's "lone hero" walking the world is full of green mountains that constantly call out her great restlessness and great freedom in artistic expression. As for whether Qingshan saw her "should be like this", as far as my rough understanding of Zhang Jie is concerned, this may not be in her expectations at all. She has surpassed the expectations of looking at each other, and as a result she is more thorough and determined. I then found that I didn't know more about Zhang Jie, so I asked me more, do you really know this child from the forest?
Let's read Zhang Jie's paintings in a quiet way. In the final analysis, every appreciation of art and literature is actually to know and understand ourselves more deeply, and to dig out more loudly the colors and expressions in the depths of our souls that have not yet woken up. This is the implicit meaning of art and literature in the human world.
I see how feminine the green mountains are, the art is really there, and the green mountains are there.
Zhang Jie's exhibition notes
Text | Lee Kyung-taek
Whether Zhang Jie's painting is good or not, I don't know. All I saw in the painting entitled "Twilight" was the little beast—who knows, maybe the beast wasn't small, but the world was big—and the beast stood on its side, as if it had suddenly stopped in its run, because the sunset in the sky was high, like an incandescent, transparent opening, and under the setting sun, it was a rolling mountain or cloud of black gray and white, and the wild horses were also dusty, rushing on the horizon.
The beast, stopped.
Don't think this is a metaphor —I'd be too stupid to say that the beast is Zhang Jie. Zhang Jie may just look at it from a distance with mixed feelings. Later, in another painting, I concluded that I approached it, and it turned out to be a leopard, so young and gorgeous, so fierce, proud and delicate, that it occupied the center of the picture, looking back, but without looking at anything, it was completely trapped in its own depths.
Who is this? I don't know.
Zhang Jie came to paint, not Chinese, but oil painting. Of course, it is difficult to imagine a Zhang Jie who carries a brush to paint a few bamboos to paint a few landscapes, Zhang Jie who paints oil painting is Zhang Jie, she is not a symphony and is definitely not a silk bamboo; and Chinese painting inevitably has to write, to inscription, Zhang Jie is old, but there is no word, oil painting at least so that she does not have to bother to explain or argue with the world.
And there must be light. Oil painting has light. Zhang Jie couldn't stand the lack of light. Her paintings have no door, no roots, no origin, and some are just light--the above and below, front and back of the light, the running and lingering of the light, the softness and majesty of the light, the thickness and thinness of the light, even the unreasonableness of the light, the willfulness, indulgence and darkness of the light. This painter was not meant to illuminate anything for people to see, for her, this light is here.
Zhang Jie is old. She never hid this, and her friends did not hide it from her. She painted a broken and abandoned car, a boat abandoned on the shore, is this car and this boat Zhang Jie? I don't know. The nameless flowers bloom in front of the wheels, the broken ship is secretly trying to grow into the land, is she painting herself? Or she has a mean taunt at the dear old car and the old boat—look at you, you're still dreaming and tossing, and you won't really stop.
But that should always be Zhang Jie, right? Are those three figures Zhang Jie's self-portraits? One in 2011 and two in 2014.
Yes, I imagine that is Zhang Jie. I could recognize her. That is Our beloved and aweed Zhang Jie, the Zhang Jie who holds his chin high to the world, the Zhang Jie who has roses and guns in his eyes, the Zhang Jie who is as humble as a grain of dust ready to forget and be forgotten at any time, the Zhang Jie who stands on the ground and floats in the sky by the deep blue, the child who is destined to run and is destined to be lonely...
A landscape without an inner heart is not a landscape
Statement | Nishikawa
Although I am a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, I do not teach art. However, after teaching for many years, I am actually no stranger to painting, artists, exhibitions, artistic trends, art history, etc. It is not uncommon for writers and poets to draw, because they are amateurs, so I am never demanding. This means that I have a general impression of amateur painters. However, after seeing some of The pictures of Zhang Jie's paintings, I was quite surprised. None of these paintings have names, only pinyin signatures and date of painting. I dare say that her plain, inky portrait of a woman (i don't know if it is a self-portrait) painted in 2011 is a good work; the pale blue and yellow face she painted in January 2014, the abstract landscape-like painting she painted in February 2013, and the mountain body painted in yellow, black and white in march 2006 show a considerable degree of understanding of the art of painting.
If a person is truly tasteful, then his or her taste will not only act on the most important task at hand. The same is true of the so-called talent of the writer: if a person has only the talent to write, but is clumsy in other fields of art, then his or her talent for writing is actually somewhat suspicious. Teacher Zhang Jie is a great writer, and is a character who has written literary works with the nature of the label of the times, such as "Love Cannot Be Forgotten", "Heavy Wings", "Ark", and "No Word". How did she become a painter again? She is said to now spend most of her time in New York. During these years in New York, painting became an important spiritual outlet for her. From writer to painter, from the attention of the crowd to the self-seclusion, what a mental journey! In her personal mental journey, how many vicissitudes of the times and the meaning of existence have been reflected! I don't know if she will give her direct opinion of society, history, others, and herself, as she did in the 1980s, but her views on it all (which I feel sometimes even disappointed and dismissive) stack up her visual expression of beauty, tranquility, and the solitude of me.
Teacher Zhang Jie's daughter Tang Di was a classmate of mine from elementary school to high school. For this reason, I met Teacher Zhang Jie when I was a teenager. A sentence she may have inadvertently said at that time has affected me to this day: "Don't think that the life of others, the life of a distant place is life, your here and now is life." At that time, I understood this sentence as the visible life in the here and now, and now reading these paintings, I realize that the side of life here and now that others cannot see is the inner life of a person alone, and this life can be externalized into a novel, externalized into poetry, externalized into a movie, a drama, or externalized into a portrait, a landscape. A portrait without an inner is not a portrait, and a landscape without an inner is not a landscape.