Mo Hequn
In the history of fine arts, a great painter always needs to meet an opportunity to achieve a leap in understanding and expression through a way close to epiphany.
For the watercolor painter Chen Naiguang, this leap and epiphany undoubtedly came from the "wonderful idea" of more than ten years of art when he entered Beijing in the early 21st century.
36 years ago, I was with Mr. Naihiro's colleague Zhuzhou Daily, who was the art editor and I was the responsible editor of any edition. He is very diligent, and has artistic eyesight, and his sketches of various figures, landscapes, and still lifes are observant, accurate with his pen, simple and beautiful lines, and dance sketches are especially good. Last month, when we met in Beijing, when recalling the newspaper's past, he said that whenever there was a performance or competition in the city, the editorial department always sent him, because most of these kinds of activities were at night, which practiced his kung fu of sketching only looking at the movements of the human body without lights, and drawing well without looking at the picture. When he was working at the Hunan Daily, Professor Xiao Huixiang of the Central Academy of Fine Arts saw his stage sketches under the pile of letters and praised them, and even said that these instant creations were much better than those that had been sorted out.
In a word, it is to convey God.
On the morning of the encounter, the blue sky and white clouds in Beijing, the autumn breeze fluttering, the apples red, the dates ripe, the autumn insects called plain and long. In his small courtyard studio, Chen Naiguang happily showed me and Brother Zhenhuang his masterpiece, watercolor dance. Only to see him, draw a piece of watercolor paper from a stack of paper, touch it with your hand, pick up a pen and sketch a few strokes on the paper very quickly, that is the most attractive line of the human body! Then dip a large pen in color, from left to right, from the inside to the outside, from top to bottom, and swing freely on the paper! The gesture carries the sound of the wind and breaks the rhythm of the waves of flowers and leaves. In an instant, a figure dance painting of a wandering skeleton, completely integrated into the realm of great freedom and great liberation jumped on the paper, the color block was unhindered, the lines popped rational, dense, virtual reality, focusing in the blank, seeking ethereality in the forced jam, and seeking qi rhyme in the flying white.
At this time, the picture is like a cloud flying with the wind, like the water flowing in the valley, like the pine waves in the mountains and ravines, all kinds of blending, bending and wondering, waves, endless meaning... At this moment, watching from the sidelines, I was like drinking a spirit in the mountains, and suddenly I heard the sound of the flowing water in the mountains, and my soul was vibrated! I couldn't help but shout three times: "Good! Good! Good! "Fortunately, the whole work is written from the beginning to the end, in one go! Fortunately, this energetic and irrepressible creative passion blends with Chen Naiguang's own pregnant dancer temperament, and the large-scale flying white brush enriches the texture of pen and ink, and perfectly shows the majestic momentum and hazy infiltration of watercolor techniques! Fortunately, his works are "between similar and unlikely", the shape is interesting, and the rough view and careful appreciation are very enjoyable!
Looking at and admiring Mr. Chen Naiguang's dancing watercolor paintings, I think that Naiguang is an artist who can be both extremely worklike and minimalist, creating at two extremes, and ultimately refusing to stick to either extreme, and the middle point of his choice of modeling scale and aesthetics is both Eastern and Western. "In the past, I used to be, Willow Yiyi; now I come to think, rain and snow." He is fascinated by the colorful dances of various ethnic groups in China, such as the original ecological beauty and bodybuilding of Yang Liping's dance postures, and the soft rhyme and stretching beauty of Western ballet and jazz dances, such as the soft rhyme and stretching beauty shown in "Swan Lake". He also has a dancing environment and a dancing companion. His wife, Ms. Yu Hui, was an intellectual dancer. In the 1960s, they sent Jiang Yong to be a young man together, and their common hobby made them dance lovers. Dance is the beauty in their hearts, but the dream that Chen Naiguang pursues in his heart is painting. He tried the combination of beauty and dreams, sketching a lot of stage reality with a paintbrush, the dancers had noses and eyes, the movements were feminine and gripping, and the audience also liked such works.
However, the truth of art is not the reality of life, and the real art is not the resemblance, but the true presentation of "God" after stripping off the cloak of "form". Chen Naiguang was deeply aware of this, he began to pursue the "soul" behind the "shape", the style of painting became more and more simplified, and gradually, the dancers on the paper disappeared the figurative, shapeless coat, strengthened the "non-resemblance" shape, strengthened the dominance of "God", and created the realm of "the pen is simpler and the more complete the god". This realm is his contemplation and experience of life, which is Oriental and Chinese. But attention and aria to life itself is the world and human.
Chen Naiguang's dancing watercolor paintings originate from the painter's poetic life feelings, and from his nearly 30 years of worshipping Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong and other flowers, birds, landscapes, and figure paintings. His colors are almost always used to contrast with lines, in order to show the brilliance of lines. Chen Naiguang has lived in the Jiangyong Mountains of Shonan for five or six years, and the wild and primitive state from the mountains, the harmony between nature and man, makes him more sensitive to the flowers and birds and the changes of the four winds and clouds than the average person, and the frankness and indifference of his personality, the richness of his experience and the quiet creative environment give him the characteristics of sensitivity to epiphany. This enables him to grasp the freehand means of the ancient sages, but also to indulge in the expression of the generation, so reading his works reads the artistic conception from ancient poetry, but in the form of pen and ink, he will feel that there is a strong modernity style, containing a layer of Eastern and Western cultures directly touching the meaning and realm of life, interesting, endless, unique.
Zong Baihua said: "Even if the first-class literature and art in the world are popular at the same time, constituting their universality and human nature, however, this alone can never make them the first class." They must also contain a deepest layer of meaning and realm, waiting for the true confidant of eternity. "This is a word of ancient knowledge, why does Mr. Chen Naiguang think so?
Originally published in Hunan Daily (February 25, 2022, 13th edition)