Zhou Chunya's painting art

Zhou Chun buds

The cultural identity of "I Find Myself" is confirmed: On Zhou Chunya's Painting Art

Wu Yongqiang | wen

Zhou Chunya's painting creation is a process of constantly "finding me with me", the purpose of which is to eliminate the rift between the "me" as the creator and its original "me", so that the work becomes a portrayal of the pure "me". At the same time, Zhou Chunya also highly identifies with her own Chinese cultural identity. On the basis of his extensive knowledge of international contemporary art and his deep understanding of the logic of modernity in Western painting, he constantly returns to the matrix of Chinese culture and connects with the diversified revelations of Ancient and Modern Chinese and Western art, thus practicing the freedom of art and the expression of the inner life of the individual. His creations show that artists can only be real, vivid and meaningful if they listen to the call of their own national cultural traditions, carefully study and deeply understand the essence of traditional art, and thus have the ability to integrate their cultural identity into the individual identity of the artist.

Zhou Chunya; Painting Art; Finding Me with Me; Cultural Identity; Tension of Deconstruction

Zhou Chunya is an artist who insists on painting and constantly practices the avant-garde spirit with painting. In the early 1980s, as a member of the "Sichuan Painters Group", he showed an avant-garde tendency with his attention to the painting itself earlier. While most painters of this period followed vernacular naturalism and used realist language to deal with popular rural themes, Zhou Chunya's "Tibetan New Generation" (1980), "Sheep Shearing" (1981), "Spring Is Coming" (1984) and other vernacular works with ethnic minority themes adopted a more painterly approach. They use deliberately emphasized lines, brush strokes and plane relationships to suppress reproducible factors such as three-dimensional space, chiaroscuro and volume shaping, forming a tension between object depiction and formal autonomy, literary narrative and visual expression, giving reality and reality an artistic transformation, and also echoing the theme of the times, without compromising the expression of human emotions and root-seeking consciousness. This shows that in the stage of "vernacular painting", Zhou Chunya clearly possessed and consciously practiced the sense of self-discipline in painting, thus pulling away from the popular painting style in China at that time in creation and revealing the characteristics of avant-garde spirit.

▼Figure 1 Zhou Chunya, "The New Generation of Tibetans", oil on canvas, 200×150cm, 1980

In 1982, after graduating from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Zhou Chunya entered the Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts. During this period, the new wave of art gradually replaced the "local painting" to set off a boom, and eventually converged into the torrent of "85 new wave". At that time, all kinds of new concepts and new terms sounded in the ears, and all kinds of new styles and new landscapes appeared on the scene, for which Zhou Chunya stood at a certain distance, as if looking at it coldly, and as if it were about to leave. Just when the movement was in full swing and the climax was rising, he quietly left the scene and chose to go to Germany to start a study abroad career at the Free Art Department of Kassel Comprehensive University. Here, through classes, galleries and exhibitions, he had the opportunity to get close to the international frontier contemporary art and see all kinds of wonders. However, in the face of the clamor, he still had to give up his love for painting. Coincidentally, neo-expressionism was making waves in the German art world at that time, and although it began with the genes of a rebellious generation in the West and showed special political overtones associated with the historical trauma of Germany and the identity crisis of German culture, it challenged the popular argument that "painting is dead" [1], allowing painting to break through the long-standing shadow of pop art, minimalism and conceptual art and reveal the dawn of revival, which greatly encouraged Zhou Chunya. At that time, on the one hand, he continued to maintain his observation of various experimental arts, and on the other hand, he devoted more energy to the study of Western art history. In particular, he traces the veins of the transformation of modernity in Western painting, from romanticism, realism, impressionism, and post-impressionism in the 19th century to the Brutalist and Expressionist traditions of the 20th century. He studied not only Neo-Expressionism, but also Old Expressionism. In contrast to the political entanglement of neo-expressionism, the simple personal subjectivity of old expressionism evoked his inner resonance.

However, the strong sense of cultural identity of German neo-expressionism still coincides with Zhou Chunya's own deep local cultural complex. On the basis of fully understanding the logic of modernity in Western painting, he returned to the matrix of Chinese culture, while deeply turning to the root-seeking journey of Chinese artistic tradition, while docking the multiple revelations of Ancient and Modern China and the West, so as to practice the freedom of art and the expression of the inner personality life of the individual. After returning from his studies in Germany in 1989, in the face of the pictorial turn and strategic operation of the domestic contemporary art collective, as well as the entry of artists from all over the world into Beijing, Zhou Chunya lived in Chengdu and walked alone on his own quest, gradually forming his highly personalized and unique artistic language. His series of works such as "Stone", "Black Root", "Green Dog", "Peach Blossom" and "Garden" have gradually attracted widespread attention, which has enabled him to gain a cross-border reputation and eventually become one of the Chinese contemporary artists with international influence.

I. The "Stone" series: the philosophy of time

After returning from studying abroad, Zhou Chunya's first series of works was "Mountain Stone", which became the beginning of his continuous and in-depth creation of the "Stone" series. As we all know, in the tradition of Chinese landscape painting, flower and bird painting and wood and stone painting, mountain stone relies on various painting methods and styles to achieve the ultimate expression. Zhou Chunya's re-collection of mountain and stone themes is not only out of personal inner experience, but also gives birth to a different language logic. In his pen, whether it is a single stone, or a bundle of stones, whether it is a stone in a cave, or a stone in the open air, whether it is a stone in the water, or a stone flower and tree, we can see the traces of weathering by time, and feel a faint trauma, that is, the spots, holes and cracks left by the strong and corrosive force since the flood era, and the stubborn stone is constantly resisting the illumination of light, the blowing of the wind, the erosion of water, and the wounds left by the bite of insects, the siege of bacteria and algae plants. In the painting, the colors that are enough to evoke the sense of touch restore the material nature of the stone. The flowing brushstrokes not only shape the shape of the stone, express its own volume, but also reveal its traumatic experience through the portrayal of the stone texture.

▼Figure 2 Zhou Chunya's "Taihu Stone" Oil on canvas 120×150 cm 1999

Zhou Chunya himself said: "Some friends say that my paintings have a 'mild violent meaning', which is too appropriate, and my painting interest is always between 'mild' and 'violent'. [2] Hurt is the end of violence, while touch is a symbol of gentleness. In this "Stone" series, the brushstroke movement not only replays the experience of injury, but also alleviates the intensity of the trauma with its touch, so that the violence and gentle feelings can be fused into a whole, mirroring the gentle elegance of time's violence. Although the violence of time against stones has never stopped, and the damage has occurred at any time, it has adopted a slowly advancing rhythm, accompanied by the sound of sunlight, wind, water and insects, embraced by the spread of bacteria and the climbing of plants, gently wrapped in the angry resistance of stones, day after day, year after year, creating wounds in their bodies and carving wrinkles on their skin. This violent scene has also been visualized in the "Red Stone" series, which is taken from the stone stained red by Jolly orange algae on the riverbed of Ya'an Shangli and Ganzi Conch Ditch, but in the picture it gives people a violent impression, either bloody, or the old wound is removed from the black scab, revealing blood red again. But even so, the viewer is not frightened, because the smooth gestures and structured colors have diluted the concentration of blood, reduced the pain of the wound, and converted the sense of violence into a gentle stimulus.

It is worth mentioning that according to the series of works, Zhou Chunya's creative career is divided into paragraphs, but only relatively, because in the stage of concentrating on creating a certain theme series, he did not absolutely give up other themes, which ran through his entire artistic career. For example, in the early days of returning from studying in Germany, he continued to paint Tibetan subjects; in the stage of the "Mountain Stone" series, he painted both "Flowers" and "Trees" series; in the "Black Root" series, he painted the "Female Body" series; while creating the "Green Dog" series, he created the "Red Man" series with the dead dog Black Root as a frequent background. The representation of stones is distributed in almost all stages of his creation.

▼ Figure 3 Zhou Chunya' "Stone Series - Ya'an Shangli" (triptych) Oil on canvas 120×150cm×3 1994

Following the concentrated painting of a batch of "Red Stone" in 1999, from this year to 2003, Zhou Chunya created several works on the theme of Taihu Stone, forming a series of "Taihu Stone". Some of these works express the monolithic and some express the group of stones. The single stone is placed in an empty picture, often with a dark background to set off its gray stone, and the group stone picture renders the background like a smoke cloud, and the ink-like grayscale changes make the painting emit a strong atmosphere. Linked to the tradition of playing with stones in Chinese culture, this group of works is in stark contrast to the nameless stones that Zhou Chunya wrote in the past, and most of its shapes are realistic, but the techniques are imagery, especially the characteristics of Taihu stone "wrinkled, leaky, thin and transparent" are extremely depicted. The reason why playing with stones has formed a tradition is that the objects of its appreciation are "wrinkled, leaky, thin, and transparent", but the red or green liquid that leaks out of the cracks of the stones looks like flowing blood, turning the literary stone into a symbol of some kind of violent aesthetics.

Second, the "Black Root" series: tender chewing

In 1994, a juvenile black German Shepherd entered Zhou Chunya's life. He bought it at the suggestion of Mr. Cen Xuegong, an old Chinese painter and founder of the Three Gorges School, who borrowed the name of a beer hall near the Minshan Hotel in Chengdu, which he used to frequent, and named it "Black Root". According to his own recollection, he did not like dogs very much before, but the arrival of Hagen changed his perception of dogs and gradually fell in love with this loyal and cute animal. He called Hagen his son, and under the careful care of him and his family, Hegen grew up and his feelings with their family became deeper and deeper. Driven by tenderness, Zhou Chunya sprouted the impulse to use a paintbrush to record the growth and life of Black Root, so he created a set of continuous pictures depicting dogs, including "Black Root Family - Man and Hostess", "Black Root Playing on the Flat Top", "Black Root Standing on flat wall", "Running Black Root", "Standing Black Root" and other works. In its individual pictures, Black Root sometimes plays alone, sometimes plays with his master, sometimes tries to stand, sometimes walks normally, but all are motionless and free, and his expression is natural. Although the dog is a spiritual animal, and although Black Root has long been accepted as a member of the family, Zhou Chunya does not take an anthropomorphic approach to its image, but tries to capture its natural vitality. The moments of ease in the painting not only release the animal instinct of "all the temptations are born without knowing why they are born, and they all get what they do not know what they are born" ("Zhuangzi , Outer Chapters , Part 100 ) , and shows the mood of a father, because of love, he wants his children to conform to nature and live the life it deserves.

▼Figure 4 Zhou Chunya's "Taihu Stone" Oil on canvas 150×200cm 1999

Here, except for a few pictures of the dog owner, most of the paintings are only the figure of a single black root, which is like a child playing alone near his relatives, accompanied by the loving eyes of his father, knowing that even if he is naughty, he will not be punished. At this time, the painter was silently by the side, watching its every move, and his eyes were inseparable. The large blank space in the painting proves that this gaze of love, except for the active dog, everything visible has receded to the edge of attention, and they fade in the painting until there is nothing. The interweaving of black and brown restores the "black gold" coat color of this German Shepherd, and the shiny fur tip flashes with golden backlight. In order to highlight this color image, the toys of the black roots and the objects around them have also given up their respective colors and merged into the visual melody woven by black and brown. The painter uses a simple, simple and descriptive brushwork to create the image of the black root. The writing-like pen is full of love, all kinds of rubbing, dragging, all kinds of presses and setbacks and the downward side of the pen edge, just like combing the hair of the dog; the touchy brushstrokes engrave the touch, hug, pleasant teasing and loving mood on the dog's body, so that other objects automatically and slowly fade into a background. These objects are like yibi cursory, breaking the static and silence of the blank space, and it seems that the air is also infected with the child's unrestrained vitality. The work is full of the realism of details and the charm of virtual reality. The sense of authenticity stems from the care of love, and the virtual reality is born because of the indescribable affection between people and dogs.

In the "Ming Tai Servant Temple Tomb Inscription of Cheng Gui Cemetery", The Ming Dynasty "Tang and Song Dynasty" writer Gui Youguang's essays were praised as "unintentionally touching, but joyful and tragic thoughts overflowing beyond words" ("The Complete Works of Wang Wensu Gong · Thirty-ninth"), looking at Zhou Chunya's "Black Roots", similar feelings arise in our hearts. A picture of the life of a dog, let us think of the photo album made by parents to record the growth of the child or the diary written late at night while the child is asleep, it refuses to anthropomorphize, does not need any rhetoric, and only touches people's hearts with daily fragments, simple images and ordinary details. The poetics of German Expressionism and the aesthetics of French Fauvist painting at the beginning of the 20th century, out of the perception of industrial technology, opposed the creators to be directly lyrical, and advocated the static beauty of the expression of objects, reflecting the calm and profound side of the expressionist tradition. In the "Black Root" series, we once again witness this traditional cross-time and space awakening. Although "Black Root" does not represent objects but life, and the images in the painting are not presented as static, all of Black Root's behavior is out of nature, in accordance with nature, without any embarrassment of interference, regardless of whether the interference is for disciplinary purposes or in the name of love. In this sense, we are able to understand what the early Expressionists called "static beauty," which stems from the author's intransigence in relation to the object depicted. But this is not because the author is cold and heartless, but precisely because he is full of affection.

▼ Figure 5 Zhou Chunya, "The Black Root Family - Man and Hostess", oil on canvas, 260×190cm, 1995

"Black Root" is also a diary about the painter's own life, where Black Root becomes a mirror image, reflecting Zhou Chunya's life state and his emotional content at that time, on the one hand, the deep love of people and dogs, on the other hand, it is a gentle touch on life. By the end of the 20th century, however, it all came to an abrupt end. In 1999, Hagen died of illness, and death severely damaged human affection with absolute violence, and turned the warm details captured in this group of works into painful memories. In the passage of time, looking at these paintings again, the interaction of black and brown makes the picture glow with the color of old photos, which alleviates the pain of life and death, but even if the photos have turned yellow, they cannot hide the mild violence in their thoughts, making it difficult for people to let go and can't help but be sad.

III. The Green Dog Series: Enlightenment in the Realm of the "Living"

Spending six years with Hei gen and saying goodbye to each other has precipitated Zhou Chunya's cognition of the character of dogs, and also stimulated his common thinking about dogs and human nature and their fate. From the connection between the dog and the person, and from the person back to the dog, he had a new understanding of the situation, troubles and difficulties of life on the earth as "living people", and on the entry, exit, entanglement and clutching of individuals in the group. In 1997, when the black roots were still with him, Zhou Chunya began to use green to paint dogs, which of course directly caused a color experiment, because no painter had ever painted dogs green in the past. But the deeper reason lies in his individual connection with Black Root and the contemplation of dogs and men. In the second year after Hagen's death, the pain of losing his dog had not yet healed, and he continued the creation of "Green Dog", which had been paused for a day. This is both an instinctive action of the artist to fill his own emotional gap, and an enlightenment of painful thoughts. At this time, the green that was occasionally used became the fluorescent light that the deceased saw when he peeked into the netherworld. Unconsciously, "Green Dog" was painted for six years, and this coincided with the time that Black Root spent with the painter when he was alive, slowly forming a huge series of works. Looking at the size of the single frame, some are more moderate, some are more exquisite, but more are amazingly large. The dog in the painting is sometimes paired with two people, sometimes there is someone next to them, but more often it appears in the picture as a single shadow. Against an empty background, it stands, walks, or lies alone, as if it does not know where it is or where it is. Sometimes it keeps its mouth shut, sometimes it opens its mouth, sometimes it barks at the sky, sometimes it looks east and west. However, the most memorable thing is the bright red tongue that spits out of its mouth against a green background.

▼ Figure 6 Zhou Chunya,"Black Root Standing on The Plain Wall", oil on canvas, 150×200cm, 1996

The painter uses rich brushwork to express the image of the dog, in order to follow his own memory of the dog. Sometimes, the brushstrokes are soft and steady, and the simple green color alone creates a "colorful ink" effect. At this time, the dog in the painting is often childish, naughty and cute, it has not yet learned to spit out its young tongue, and the urgent bark is only to attract the attention of the owner. Sometimes, the brush strokes are urgent and exciting, the dense lines, the texture of the thick brush and the marks of poking, pressing and dragging on the canvas, placing the dog in the exciting atmosphere of green, red, black, brown or ochre weaving, like the sad and happy emotions of the dog and its owner when they are reunited after an unexpected separation. But more often, the brushstrokes of "Green Dog" are full of flow and generativeness, they drive the materialistic layers of color, around the main color of green, mixed with black, brown, ochre or earth red and other colors, stirring up magma on the dog's body, allowing it to surge, tumble, sometimes dripping down the house leak marks, and sometimes transmitting and spreading like ripples. However, there is still an infinite tension between the layers of color and between the pigments and pigments, which is a harbinger of spurting or collapse. This contradicts the nature of green, causing it to begin to glow. With that, the image of the dog became different: it spat out a red tongue, gasped for breath, tried to be patient, but finally could not stop the deep roar.

▼Figure 7 Zhou Chunya's "Green Dog" Oil on canvas 100×80cm, 2005

If the "Black Root" series is a pure emotional expression of the artist's relationship with the individual human dog of The Black Root, then "Green Dog" is a complex symphony, which has both a personal emotional telling and an expression of the thinking of human character and destiny beyond the individual emotion. The former uses the image of a puppy and the suggestive situation of a long-term reunion between people and dogs, pouring out endless thoughts about dogs, intractable sadness and loneliness of reminiscing about the past, reminding us of a guitar accompaniment song called "Tears In Heaven", which sings: "If I meet you in heaven, will you remember my name?" If I were to reunite with you in heaven, would we still be the same as before? ...... If I met you in heaven, would you be willing to hold my hand? If I see you again in heaven, will you help me up? [3] When we saw the paintings and listened to the music, we couldn't help but burst into tears. However, in the latter, we gradually understand the painter's pain, understanding that this pain no longer points to the separation of life and death between relatives alone, but also to a certain shareable disposition between man and dog. Since ancient times, dogs have wandered among the crowds, learned to see people talk and observe colors; firmly support those they know, and oppose all those they don't know; wag their tails when they are happy, and sell when they are aggrieved. But the dog is a dog after all, it was originally the brother of the wolf, like to be lively, but also yearn for loneliness; accustomed to obedience, but eager to be untamed. Isn't this a portrayal of some picture of human society? Even if they flaunt independence, they have to constantly submit to the violence of the majority in their lifetime. In the image of the dog gasping for breath and wagging its tail, we don't know if it is struggling to hide its nature, but the dog's roar may remind us of a warning from Sartre that says, "The other is hell" [4], and we know that this is certainly not directed at dogs. Zhou Chunya himself once said: "The green dog is a symbol, a symbol, and green is quiet, romantic, lyrical, and contains the tranquil mood before the outbreak." [5] Since Green Dog does not abandon symbolism, what it symbolizes will not be directed solely at the realm of dogs. For the human world, the romance and lyricism of green are short-lived and unstable, and green can also suddenly shine, changing into a cloudy and changing color, instantly exposing the embarrassment of the human situation and the inherent contradictions of human nature. This makes one feel that under the appearance of tranquility, perhaps the "world" of the "world" is piling up its wordless violence.

▼ Figure 8 Zhou Chunya's "Green Dog" Oil on canvas 250×200cm 2008

4. "Peach Blossom" series: the release of original vitality

Zhou Chunya likes to paint flowers and trees, as if the flowers and trees are hiding his constant thoughts. While creating the Stone series, he painted a lot of works about flowers and trees. They are sometimes painted in one with the stone, sometimes opened alone, and another chapter. Compared with the warmth of the flower and the serenity of the tree, the dog shows its active and violent characteristics. In 1997, when Zhou Chunya first tasted the creation of "Green Dog", he once let the big wolf dog and peach blossoms coexist in a painting. Although the dog occupies an absolute position and the peach blossom is only an inconspicuous backdrop, he still feels that "the gentle and gorgeous beauty of the peach blossom and the violence of the wolf dog are juxtaposed, forming a strong visual and psychological contrast that fascinates me" [6]. Needless to say, what he was fascinated by was the "mild violent connotations" contained in it.

In 2005, peach blossoms once again appeared in Zhou Chunya's pen. According to his own recollection, it was the experience of seeing peach blossoms in Longquan Mountain in Chengdu a year ago that inspired him. In the Chinese cultural tradition, the peach blossom has always been a symbol of romance. Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Origin" depicts a paradise with no dispute with the world. Because of its connection with the breeding season, and because of its gorgeous colors, seductive posture and intoxicating fragrance, peach blossoms are often used to describe beauty and love, and even male and female love. The Zhou Yi interprets the blooming of peach blossoms as a good omen for men and women to court, and has achieved a common saying in later generations, "peach blossom luck" [7]. The sentence "Peach Dream" in the "Book of Poetry and Peach Dream" not only writes the bright and moving of the bride, but also writes the spring light in the heart of the groom's official. There are also sentences in Tang poems that associate peach blossoms, beauty and eroticism, for example, "Peach blossoms are shallow and deep, like uniform depth and light makeup" (Tang Yuanshu's "Peach Blossom"), which is extremely beautiful and beautiful. These metaphors are all peach blossoms.

▼Figure 9 Zhou Chunya", "Peach Blossom Beginning", oil on canvas, 150×120cm, 2010

Guan Zhou Chunya's "Peach Blossom" series has both a single branch and no roots of folded branches and flowers, and a peach forest landscape in a certain time and space environment, and most of the latter. Since the latter is explicitly or implicitly involved in the expression of love in the peach forest, the painter also called these works "Flower Collection" or "Flower Chronicle". In these paintings, peach blossoms either reflect distant mountains, or near ponds, or lining green trees, or near strange rocks; some bloom in the wilderness, some flowers bloom in deep valleys, some roots grow in fields, and some slope out of the roof. If the flower room is used as a visual reference, in the perspective of depth of field, these series of works can be roughly seen in three compositional forms: close-up, close-up and medium-shot. Among them, some tree trunks are slanted and the branches are trembling, some branches are leafy and flower clusters, some are bald branches and leaves, residual flowers are withered, and some fat flowers bloom and are delicate.

In addition to the green and red flowers, the "Peach Blossom" series is also occasionally seen, sometimes in the form of a naked red or flesh-colored human figure, and sometimes a well-dressed beauty. Among them, the "red people" are more symbolic, they share the color of peach blossoms, but also share the pride of being encouraged by "peach blossom luck". With their naked flesh and undisguised movements, they unleashed their instincts in front of flowers, under trees, and on the field, exerting their vitality and whirlwinds. Even the hard-to-see images give people secret excitement, all the way to the tension, excitement, tremor, spray and dizziness. As for the scene of flowers and leaves falling, it starts from the price that life pays for happy adventures, proving that there is only one line between bliss and collapse. However, according to the rhythm of the blossoming and falling of the flowers, although decay begins with blooming, the peach blossoms never refuse to bloom because they foresee decay.

▼Figure 10 Zhou Chunya", "Peach Blossom Wind", oil on canvas, 250×200cm, 2004

In terms of color use, the "Peach Blossom" series often uses red, green and blue as the main colors, which constitutes a very dazzling hue. Green and Blue had just been quiet, and Red came to look for trouble, and after a brief confrontation, a noise broke out in an instant. At this time, white, yellow, orange, purple, and brown have emerged, through the contrast and coordination of cold and warm, line and surface, curved and straight, shape and color, the flowers and trees, trees and people, people and scenery are gathered together, and the waves are chased together, so that the whole picture is involved in the ocean of passion. The death of the peach burns the soul and body of the person; the harmony of red and white portrays the brightness and delicacy of the peach blossom, exposing the depth of desire; green, stirring people's thoughts of returning to nature; blue, dyeing people's mood with the color of the clear sky. However, not all the works in the "Peach Blossom" series show the image of a sunny day, and there are also gray tone sub-images. Although they still form the main color of red, green, and blue, they reduce the buffering force of saturation and color scale, and convert the sharp color contrast into a neutral harmony. Relying on this harmony, the picture world leaves the illumination of spring light and is contaminated with full water vapor, thus showing a more delicate state of existence of peach blossoms, which are either condensed with smoke, or misty with smoke and rain, or water droplets, or fall into confusion through vertigo. And the viewer knows that this is of course not just the experience of peach blossoms.

V. "Garden" Series: Multiple Identification of Chinese Cultural Identity

Zhou Chunya's love of painting stones, flowers and trees is also deeply related to his traditional cultural complex. After returning from Germany, he became more and more fond of studying traditional Chinese painting, hoping to learn from it. He was particularly interested in the literati painting traditions, such as Su Shi, Wang Meng, Dong Qichang, the "Four Kings", the Bada Shanren, Shi Tao, and Huang Binhong. Correspondingly, he also has a crush on the Chinese gardening culture full of literati interest. His favorite flowers, trees and Taihu stones are indispensable materials for gardening. In the past, he painted separately with these elements as the subject matter, but later he simply used the entire garden as the subject of his work, which has lasted for 10 years. This began in 2011 with the creation of the "Yu Garden" series, where Shanghai is home to his mother's second home. From here, Zhou Chunya traveled to Yangzhou, Suzhou, Ningbo, and laoshan in Shandong, continuously depicting Jiangnan gardens, freehand natural scenery, and gradually presenting a series of "Garden" paintings. Among them, there are depictions of famous gardens in Jiangnan such as Yu Garden, Katashi Mountain House, Daming Temple, slender West Lake, etc., as well as magnificent works that dialogue between ancient and modern times and span heaven and man, such as "Taibai Mountain Map", "Guqu Forest House Map", and "Danshan Yinghai" [8]. Among them, the garden generally takes a partial scene, each with small bridges flowing water, pavilions or flowers, trees and stones as the mainstay, integrating them into the main and orderly pictures; while the works of freehand nature borrow the classics of the ancients, depicting the southeast shape, they either overlook the panorama, or into the deep scene, to look up and look down, the rhythm of the body swimming, showing the common change experience of nature and human life.

▼ Figure 11 Zhou Chunya", one of the "Yu Garden" series (two-part painting) Oil on canvas 204×272cm×2 2012

In the discourse system of traditional Chinese art, there is no concept of "landscape", only the concept of "landscape". If the landscape is an aesthetic nature, then the landscape is a conceptual nature. In the common conceptual model rooted in the spirit of traditional Chinese culture, Chinese gardens and landscape painting show a close intertextual relationship, it can be said that the garden is a physical landscape, and the landscape is an pictorial garden. Understanding this, we can trace the image logic of Zhou Chunya's "Garden" series, which is an extension of the internal logic of traditional landscape painting, which contains the wonderful meaning of "looking at the small with the big" and "traveling with people and things". In this series of works that directly depict the garden, we will even find a Foucault-style "reproduction" logic - the garden reproduces the landscape, the garden painting reproduces the garden - so that we can continue to borrow Foucault's words to describe these works as "classical reproductions" in the context of Chinese art [9], they are not only depictions of the garden landscape, but also a unique interpretation of Chinese garden culture, reflecting a cultural identity that integrates contemporary perspectives and individual positions. As for the "Taibai Mountain Map", "Guqu Forest House Map", and "Danshan Yinghai Map", it is not primitive nature, but the activity field where people are located. With their strong temporal and spatial humanity, they resonate with garden painting.

These three works appropriate the title and composition of the yuan dynasty landscape painting master Wang Meng's work of the same name, so the rhetoric of contemporary art establishes a dialogue between the present and the ancient, as if to interpret The narrative logic of Gombrich's art history - "knowing and seeing" and "schema and correction". If this can be interpreted as a certain conceptuality, then its composition cannot exclude the sense of history of "the change of ancient and modern times at the time of the investigation of heaven and man" (Han Sima Qian's "History of Ren Anshu"), nor can it stop the sighs of the deceased Such as Si and the vicissitudes of the sea. More importantly, these works are derived from the individual experience of the artist. Among them, the painting "Taibai Mountain Map" particularly reflects its individual experience derived from life. In a huge scroll of horizontal compositions, the work appropriates the spatial structure of Wang Meng's painting of the same name in the form of a quadrangle group of paintings, but it shows a family history of the painter himself. The painting takes the life of the painter's mother as a clue, from right to left, combined with landscape imagery, using collage to depict the mother of youth and youth, the family portrait of the painter with his parents, sister and sister when he was a child, his childhood self, today's elderly mother, thus changing time and space in a large span, unfolding the life history narrative of two generations of his family, which involves the mother's childhood from Ningbo to Shanghai, the youth era to join the Southwest Field Service Corps to accompany the army to Chongqing, acquaintance with the father, a family, the family moved from Chongqing to Chengdu, Today's painter accompanies his mother to revisit his homeland and other plots. In this way, in the context of the dialogue between ancient and modern art, the work constructs a dialogue space around two generations and the present and the past. The life of the mother is accompanied by the changes in Chinese society in the 20th century, so its dialogue appears to unfold not only between individuals and individuals, individuals and families, but also between family history and social history, thus further adding a modern color to the Chinese cultural identity of the work.

6. Zhou Chunya's Artistic Aesthetics: Towards "Deconstructed Tension"

Throughout all of Zhou Chunya's series of works, we can see the profound influence of traditional Chinese painting, especially literati painting. This is prominently reflected in the freehand of its language and the oriental humanistic temperament in the picture. Zhao Mengfu's poem "Self-titled Xiushi Shulin Tu" says: "Stone is like flying white wood, and writing bamboo should also be eight ways." If anyone can do this, it should be known that the calligraphy and painting are the same. "In the Chinese literati art system, calligraphy acts as a sensitive medium, connecting the history of the evolution of music and dance calligraphy and painting, which reaches out to music and dance and the other to the fusion of calligraphy and painting. Under the medium of calligraphy, Chinese literati painting shares the meaning of "writing", which is the "writing" of the methodology and the "writing" of the aesthetic realm. Calligraphy is not only strictly obedient to the law, pay attention to inheritance, but also the most obedient to nature, indulging in freedom, so in all kinds of calligraphy, only cursive can serve as a symbol of calligraphy. In this way, "painting with books" also means restricting the grammar and physical and mental freedom, and bringing the painter's heart, emotion and cultivation into painting together, so that painting creation not only becomes a means of self-expression, but also becomes a smooth way to cultivate life and lead to the road. After the Fall of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, literati painters realized the substitution of "writing" for "drawing" by entering painting with books, so that painting gained inner freedom while accepting stylized norms. It is precisely in the perception of the interconnectedness of calligraphy performance and the realm of freehand that Zhou Chunya has received important enlightenment, and all his images are full of written pleasure. Although he does not strictly adhere to the style of the writer's pen, his exquisite feel and indulgent writing have become a nerve, transmitting each other between subject and object, depiction and expression, and at the same time integrating the autonomy of the creative subject with the self-discipline of the picture. This automatically distanced him from the "Bad Painting"[10] advocated by Neo-Expressionism, which represented American-style neo-expressionism—his paintings were unrestrained, but not wild; free, but not unorganized. Even the expression of violence or the primitive instincts of animals is soaked with warmth and elegance, making people smell the gentle and exuding literati atmosphere.

For Zhou Chunya, this kind of artistic "do what you want and don't exceed the rules" (from the Analects of the Analects for the Government) mainly comes from his research on traditional Chinese painting and his understanding of the spirit of Chinese art. He sought reference from literati paintings, reflecting his cultural attitude of respecting the local spirit and remembering traditions. However, he did not accept traditions indiscriminately, for example, he was skeptical of the "gentle, introverted, inert" of literati paintings, and of their "contrived, pretentious, and even mysterious elements" [11]. He said, "Tradition is not a rule and a restriction for me, but a stimulant that inspires me to create", "I love tradition but refuse to be faithful, docile and enslaved, I have no intention of being responsible for the ancients, I care about my feelings and my expressions" [12]. Comparing his works, we feel that this is indeed the voice of the heart. In his works, we strongly feel that the painter wants to deconstruct the tradition with the presence of his personal subjectivity, and his immediate goal is the stylization and non-subjectivity of the tradition. In this sense, his creative career can be seen as an ongoing process of an artist's search for self and constructive subject, which coincides with a return to tradition and a critical tradition. Among them, the regression is limited, not to passively accept the influence of tradition, but to gain inspiration from tradition; and criticism is unlimited, not to affirm positions, but to reflect to help move forward. In this dialectical context, Zhou Chunya's art shows a certain spiritual resonance with German Neo-Expressionism, because the latter "new" is new in the remembrance of the German national tradition, the critical reflection on history, and the cry of the self to pursue a desperate situation in the cracks of history.

The pursuit of the visuality of color and the sense of volume of the shape is the tradition of European painting, Zhou Chunya absorbed this tradition, and most of the time, his works have strong colors and thick volume presentation, which is far away from traditional Chinese painting. However, because of the simultaneous absorption of the freehand tradition of Chinese literati painting, the sense of color and volume of these works become the product of the collision of Chinese and Western painting traditions, and the result is that both traditions are deconstructed, resulting in personalized language. In terms of color, the color in Zhou Chunya's works is no longer the realistic color of traditional European painting, but a modern color full of expressiveness; and the implantation of the writing brush of literati painting infiltrates the freehand into the expressiveness, making it exude oriental charm. In terms of volume, the volume in Zhou Chunya's works is not the realistic volume in traditional European painting, but closer to the volume of modern sculpture. It connects the texture of the picture and the texture of the body, exposing the process of the painting material and the object of the encounter, confrontation and negotiation, thus transforming the material movement into a modern expressive language, as we see in Giacometti's sculptures. This is the self-expression of the creative process, and its process and transformation make the freehand of Chinese literati paintings come into play: on the one hand, the writing pen plays a role in shaping the shape of the object, and on the other hand, the imaginative composition conveys the spatial structure; the former helps to delete the complex and simplify, and the latter helps to enrich the volume and virtual reality, thus making the picture vivid and vivid. Zhou Chunya himself said that he found an inner quality of sculpture in the landscapes, flowers and birds of the Bada Shanren, and what he wanted to do was to transform it with strength, volume and speed, so that it could get rid of its introverted personality and obtain a masculine and extroverted temperament [13].

Fundamentally, however, the uniqueness of Zhou Chunya's painting language is not in the color, shape or brushstrokes on its surface, but in a deconstructive tension in its works. It resembles the "giant rage" contained in Michelangelo's sculptures, in which everything is temporarily quiet, but the energy of cohesion is about to explode. At this moment, static and moving, curved and straight, thick and thin, Xu and disease, rigid and soft, moist and dry, virtual and real, and retracted and released are all in a dangerous balance, as if just waiting for a cough can lead to landslides and cracks. This is also what Zhou Chunya called the "tranquil mood before the outbreak" when talking about the green color used in his "Green Dog" series, behind which is the contradiction between spirit and flesh, emotion and intellect, impulse and moderation. According to Michelangelo, sculpture is all about liberating life imprisoned in stone. If Zhou Chunyazhi's penchant for painting stones can reach some kind of metaphorical dialogue with them, then we will witness the spiritual resonance of the two across time and space. Michelangelo, who is in the classical era of European art history, adopts religious themes and realistic techniques to express the "anger of giants" around public art; Zhou Chunya, who is in the context of global contemporary art, uses themes and freehand techniques in daily life to construct a "peaceful mood before the outbreak" in the way of individual free creation, which can be described as a contemporary interpretation and praise of "giant anger".

The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) argued that beauty is a "pure contradiction," like a thorny rose. This provides us with another dimension for understanding the tension of Zhou Chunya's painting language leading to deconstruction. Rilke loved roses, writing countless poems about roses in his life, but eventually died of being stabbed by a rose. When he had a premonition that he was about to die, he still had a crush on the rose. In his Epitaph, he wrote: "Roses, oh, pure contradictions, desires, are the sleep that no one under these many eyelids has ever had." [14] There is no purer contradiction than life and death, the rose, which took Rilke's life but made it beautiful. This is the beauty expressed by the poet at the end of his life with gentle psalms, with the extreme contradiction between life and death to form a tension, which mixes the violence of death with the seductive floral fragrance, which makes people smell a breath, which immediately reminds us of the "gentle violence" in Zhou Chunya's creation. And in Zhou Chunya, this is not only a synchronic work feature, but also a diachronic creative rhythm - from violence to moderation, and from mildness to violence, and so on and on - this "moderate violence" will expose us with many clues, let us find that behind it is actually hidden the "pure contradiction" that Rilke reads, and recognize a "deconstructive tension" from it. But this is not a formalistic tension. The French poet Paul Valery (1871-1945) said: "Rilke is the most feminine and spiritual person in the world." [15] As we continue to use "moderate violence" as a clue to trace the essence of Zhou Chunya's art, it is inevitable that we will trace it here.

Zhou Chunya has an easy-going personality, is not ostentatious, and always has a full interest in ordinary life. Artistically, he also focuses on the life he knows, and is not accustomed to grand narratives, boot tickling and dramatic exaggeration. After the ebb and flow of "vernacular painting", he deliberately kept a distance from the collective movement and grand narrative, and no longer relied on playing the role of the "other" to determine the direction of his creation. Since then, his creation has been a process of constantly "finding me with me", the purpose of which is to eliminate the rift between the "me" as the creator and the original "me", so that the work becomes a portrayal of the pure "me". It was at this point that he came deeper and deeper into the essence of Expressionism. In fact, this process of "finding me with me" is also a process of integrating artistic creation with the life of the artist, which makes each of his creative series come from his personal experience, reflecting the melody of his life, and touching people's hearts with a sense of truth.

As a Chinese artist, Zhou Chunya instinctively identifies with her cultural identity and benefits greatly from it. His creations show that artists can only be real, vivid and meaningful if they listen to the call of their own national cultural traditions, carefully study and deeply understand the essence of traditional art, and thus have the ability to integrate the cultural identity they uphold into the individual identity of the artist. To achieve this, it will also depend on the artist's sensitivity to the times, a clear understanding of the direction of art history, and a broad vision of foreign cultures. In contemporary society, Zhou Chunya knows that he cannot circumvent the road of "grafting between China and the West", but he understands that the "grafting of China and the West" adopted by the 20th century reform of Chinese painting and the "nationalization" of oil painting can no longer work. Painting Chinese painting by the method of oil painting, or painting oil painting with the method of Chinese painting, can not truly achieve "Chinese and Western grafting", even if it is grafted, it is impossible to bear useful fruits. In the face of the strong traditions of Chinese and Western art, the information explosion in the era of globalization and the ups and downs of the domestic art world, the only way is to open your heart and return to yourself. With this attitude, he spanned between ancient and modern Times in China and the West, unearthing a wide range of revelations, and finally using them as fuel to light up the lamp of self.

【Notes】

[1] From April 24 to May 24 and from June 14 to August 3, 2015, "The Return of Western Painting: Marcus Lüpertz – German Neo-Expressionist Masters Exhibition" toured the Times Art Museum in Beijing and the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Redworks In Guangzhou. During the exhibition in Beijing, on the afternoon of April 27, markus Lupertz (1941- ) was invited to the Central Academy of Fine Arts to give a lecture on "The Contemporary Way of Painting - Lüpertz and German Neo-Expressionism". In his lecture, Lüpertz said: "I have probably heard seven or eight times in my life that painting is dead, but it is meaningless. ...... Avant-garde artists such as Duchamp, Boyce, Klein, Fontana, who tried to end art through their own creations, of course they brought new perspectives and had a lot of fun, but it lost the 'master' of the past. So in the art museum, there are all kinds of meaningless radicals, noises, endless, everything is not carefully investigated, or even just for pure entertainment. We are facing the era of visual revolution, which affects almost everyone, and computers, movies and television are noisy and impatient to dominate our aesthetic world. Lüpertz believes that the history of painting is thousands of years long, and the emergence of new media is only a few decades, and the vitality of painting can be easily dissolved by new media? He claimed that new media made art die, and that he relied on painting to save it. He said: "The art of painting is the most beautiful medium of communication, and people can become better versions of themselves as a result." A person who has not seen a landscape painting may not appreciate the real nature; if he has not seen a woman's portrait, he does not know how beautiful the human body is. ”

[2] The phrase "mildly violent" was coined by critic Qi Lan. See Qi Lan.The Inspiration of Chinese Writing:About Zhou Chunya [M]//Cai Guoqiang, Editor-in-Chief.How about art? Contemporary Art from China .Nanning:Guangxi Normal University Press, 2016:162-166.

[3] The song was written by British rock singer Eric Patrick Clapton (CBE, 1945-). At 11 a.m. on March 20, 1991, Clapton's youngest son, Connor, who was only 4 and a half years old, fell from the window of his mother's 53-story apartment in New York due to careless babysitting. In 1992, Clapton wrote the soundtrack single for the film Rush, in which he poured out his endless thoughts about his son.

[4] This phrase comes from the male protagonist of the philosophical play Confinement by the French existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre.

[5] Edited by the Editorial Department of Fine Arts Literature,Art Literature ·Super Freehand Oil Painting Album[M].Wuhan:Hubei Fine Arts Publishing House, 2002:27.

[6] Zhou Chunya.Experience Painting [EB/OL].(2007-11-03)[2018-04-16].Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts Series "Community of Differences" No. 23.https://www.scfai.edu.cn/ sgysxy/info/1025/1295.htm.

[7] In the Zhou Yi, it is believed that when the "four elephants meet" (the combination of yin and yang), the qi of heaven and earth urges the peach blossoms to bloom, which is the best season for courtship, so people call the love between men and women "peach blossom luck".

[8] "Taibai Mountain Map", "Forest House Map of Guqu District", and "Danshan Yinghai" are works created by Zhou Chunya between 2018 and 2019, and were first exhibited in Zhou Chunya's solo exhibition "Zhou Chunya: Southeast Shape Victory" held at the Shanghai Long Museum from October 26, 2019 to January 5, 2020. Another: "Gu District" in the "Forest House Map of Guqu District" is one of the ancient names of Taihu Lake. Taihu Lake also has names such as "Zhenze", "Five Lakes" and "Kasazawa". "Zhou Li Xia Guan Zhi Fang Clan": "In the southeast of Yangzhou, its mountain town is known as Huiji, and its Ze Xue is known as the District." Erya Shidi: "There is a district between Wuyue and Wuyue. Sun Yi of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Miscellaneous Records, And Place Names": "Song Gao, a mountain outside the country and a name two, with a district, a lake and a lake and a special name." ”

[9] In the first chapter of The Order of Things (i.e., Words and Things), Gong'e, Foucault refers to the 17th-century Spanish painter Velázquez's oil painting Gong'e as "the reproduction of classical reproduction".

[10] "Bad Painting" is a concept proposed by the American critic and curator Marcia Tucker in the 1970s to name a trend in American figurative painting at the time: abandoning the conventional painting and highlighting witty irony. The self-taught artist Neil Jenney (1945- ) is his representative painter. The artist Werner Buttner commented on this "clumsy painting": "It is indeed painting, but not the beautiful, authentic classical charm conveyed by Renaissance painting." 'Clumsy painting' is an expression of a banal, even despicable, authenticity. ""Flowers Between Flowers"——Interview with Zhou Chunya[J/OL].(2007-03-02)[2021-08-27].Art China (art.chna.cn)i

[11] [12] [13]漆澜 .i，http：//big5.chna.com.cn/gate/big5/art. china.cn/zixun/2007-03/02/content_1522402.htm.

[14] Originally, it was the subject of Rilke's poem "Roses, Oh, Pure Contradictions". On October 27, 1925, the poet made this short poem with only three lines his epitaph in his will.

[15] Quote from Paul Valery's "Remembrance and Farewell". Excerpted from [de] Stefan Anton George (1868-1933).Selected Poems of seven German [M].Feng Zhi translation.Chongqing:Chongqing University Press, 2019:510.

Wu Yongqiang: Professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Arts of Sichuan University

Editor-in-Charge: Wang Ding

Head of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China