▲"Crane Bamboo"
Lu Xiaobo
Ink on paper 70×70cm
In 2020
The great beauty of heaven and earth is the tao of nature
□ ming
Ancient Chinese aesthetics has always advocated nature, taking nature as beauty, and natural aesthetic consciousness is deeply accumulated in the cultural and psychological structure of the Chinese nation, casting a unique natural aesthetic. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu created the concept of Tao, viewing Dao as the mother of heaven and earth, the source of all things, and emphasizing "Tao Law Nature". Another philosopher, Zhuangzi, one of his core ideas was "nature", believing that "heaven and earth have great beauty without words" and advocating "the natural beauty of heaven and earth". The "nature" referred to by Lao Zhuang's thought is not pure visual objectivity, but actually embedded in human concepts and imaginations. Emerson, a famous American thinker in the 19th century, wrote in "Naturalism" that the key to achieving the ultimate beauty of natural beauty is to have a more sublime or spiritual element. The sublime and sacred beauty, which can be loved without the slightest femininity, is the beauty of union with the human will. The use of brushes to depict the nature of heaven and earth and the times carries the aesthetic ideals of contemporary artists, and is also the common theme of Lu Xiaobo, Lv Zhongyuan and Xu Ming.
▲"Crane Dance"
Lu Xiaobo is undoubtedly very outstanding in practicing this subject. His artistic practice is not limited to the field of design, adhering to the cultural ideal of combining art and science and technology, immersing himself in excavating the contemporary significance of traditional Chinese painting art, and showing a different landscape in the field of contemporary Chinese painting innovation and expansion.
A native of Hunan, Lu Xiaobo was born in the late 1950s in Zhuzhou, a hub city in the lower reaches of the Xiang River. He is currently the dean of the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, the vice chairman of the China Artists Association, and a well-known design discipline leader and art designer in mainland China, at the same time, he also serves as the director of the Design Discipline Teaching Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education and the director of the Art and Scientific Research Center of Tsinghua University. Influenced by his family, Lu Xiaobo liked to paint since childhood, even during his labor in the countryside, he still insisted on self-study painting, recording his life with a paintbrush every day, and this experience undoubtedly brought a profound impact on Lu Xiaobo's life. In 1977, the first year of the resumption of the college entrance examination, Lu Xiaobo successfully passed the then Central Academy of Arts and Crafts with his talent, which is now the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University. Before 2000, the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, referred to as Gongmei and Central Art, two state-level art academies, have been the two flags of China's contemporary art circles and art education circles, representing the height and yardstick of art design and art creation, respectively. During his study of gongmei, he was deeply influenced and taught by Pang Xuanqin, Zhang Guangyu, Zhang Tong, Wu Guanzhong, Yuan Yunfu and other art masters of the older generation, laying a solid foundation for his subsequent artistic life, and in 1982, Lu Xiaobo stayed in the school to teach after graduation. At the end of 1999 at the turn of the century, with the rise of the tide of mergers and universities, the complementary advantages and the concept of creating a first-class school, so that the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts was merged into Tsinghua University and officially became the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, from gongmei to Tsinghua, Lu Xiaobo's artistic trajectory realized the organic combination of the art and art tradition and the spirit of Tsinghua, he adhered to the spirit of the combination of art and science advocated by the famous scientist Li Zhengdao and the art master Wu Guanzhong in Tsinghua University, and promoted the combination of art and science in the mainland and the development of this emerging discipline.
▲"Nap"
Lu Xiaobo not only has a global artistic vision and design thinking, but also has a profound traditional Chinese cultural attainment, and his ink paintings, especially the creation of Xianhe, to some extent embody the idea of combining art and science.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the mainland began to pay attention to the development of design education. Lu Xiaobo, who has just graduated and stayed in school to teach, had the opportunity to accompany the art and design education delegation sent by the government to investigate and visit many design art colleges in more than a dozen cities in Germany, this inspection experience greatly broadened his horizons, and soon after returning to China, he visited Germany again for 3 years, during which the bionic design course studied during this period brought a profound impact to Lu Xiaobo's artistic thinking and ink creation. The bionic design course requires students to each look for the animals and plants in nature, observe and find the data under the microscope, and then use emoticons to analyze the rationality of their designs, such as the wings of dragonflies and the stem-leaf relationship of large-leaved plants, thereby exploring the natural laws, biological functions and morphological structures in the design. This analysis process reflects the essence of things and the combination of science and technology, bringing Lu Xiaobo profound artistic enlightenment, in this learning process, he through the observation of animals and plants in nature, explore the natural laws, biological mechanisms and morphological structures in the design, for him to engage in flower and bird painting to observe the image of animals and plants, open up a unique artistic perspective. It was also during his visit to Germany that he began to create ink paintings of flowers and birds.
▲"Mercedes-
Ink on paper 140×70cm
In 2021
Lu Xiaobo chose the crane as the object of his bionic design course, in the depiction of the dynamic flow of the crane, carefully pondered the dynamics and structure of the crane, through meticulous observation, he chose to express the posture of the crane in the form of ink, at the same time, more creatively added design elements, making the work more personal.
Lu Xiaobo's preference for xianhe stems from his deep love for the profound spirit of traditional Chinese culture, and is not unrelated to his birth and growth in the land of Xiaoxiang Lingyun, and is more tainted by the "nature of teaching". The Xiangjiang River has nourished a large number of literati and inkers with its spiritual beauty, and is the birthplace of the Nanzong landscape painting school that Dong Qichang respects. On the banks of the Xiangjiang River, the water and grass are abundant, and in the Hibiscus country, birds flying is the ideal performance content for artists.
▲Eagle
Lu Xiaobo's crane is flexible and ethereal, elegant and elegant, and has a thousand postures. For example, "Spring Wind Xianghe", "Hefeng Crane Xiang", and "Suyu Danding" depict a group of cranes flying in the air. The white crane in "Crane Fun" and "Crane Rhyme" seems to step on the soothing music beat and sing and dance lightly. Spiritual and uncorrected qualifications, self-proud wind bones, is a free and full of vitality of natural contemplation. His series of red-crowned cranes inherit the elegant style of Chinese culture, express the freehand soul of Chinese painting, continue the style and context of the artists of tsinghua academy of fine arts who designed and painted at the same time, and entered the pursuit of the ideal of life that is consistent with human painting and natural, attaches nature to the spirit of Chinese literature, and constantly transforms into the world of human meaning, forming a unique aesthetic pattern. Chen Chiyu, a well-known art critic and professor at Tsinghua University, pointed out in a review article that Lu Xiaobo's works are "an emotional life station in his hard-fought design career and art education, an emotional attachment to art, a form of understanding of life, and also an aesthetic practice of his way of viewing nature, tasting the image of flowers and birds, and creating the realm of art"!
Lü Zhongyuan was born in Wuhan, Jiangcheng, and has loved painting since he was a child, and in the area of the three-story (place name) of Wuchang, where he lives, he has been pulled by him to be a sketching model in his left and right neighbors, and is a well-known child king. Every time he took a ferry back and forth between Wuchang and Hankou on both sides of the Yangtze River, standing on the side of the boat to watch the rushing currents on the river, the floating clouds in the sky, and the colorful cities under the light and shadow, he would be fascinated and nurtured his deep feelings for the homeland of the mountains and rivers. In 1979, he was admitted to the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts with excellent results, and then studied in Japan, successively studying painting with international masters such as Wu Guanzhong, Zhang Tong, Dongshan Kuiyi, and Kayama Youzao, with a very high artistic starting point and a broad artistic vision.
▲"Autumn Water"
Lv Zhongyuan
Oil on canvas 120×160cm
In 2019
Western oil painting has been introduced to China for more than a hundred years, in the process of sinicization of oil painting, Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu, Zao Wou-ki, Zhu Dequn, Wu Guan, and other masters of the older generation have created a path of oil painting combining Chinese and Western painting, which has become one of the directions for the development of modern and contemporary oil painting in China. Lv Zhongyuan has a keen insight into the development history of Chinese oil painting and the trend of international contemporary art, made new explorations on the artistic road of combining Chinese and Western, and achieved commendable creative results, he has visited and sketched in France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and the United States, inspected Western contemporary art, conducted in-depth research on Western abstract painting, and deeply explored the artistic concepts and abstract oil paintings of Kandinsky, Bullock and the outstanding representatives of Chinese abstract art Zao Wou-Ki and Zhu Dequn. Absorbing the artistic essence of his mentor Wu Guanzhong, combining the philosophical thoughts of the ancient Chinese sages and the spirit of Zen Buddhism, and through the transformation of oil painting media, it is integrated into the meaning and realm of Chinese landscape painting, expanding the new path of combining Chinese and Western, and creating a number of contemporary abstract oil paintings with oriental charm. He has held the "Dashan Dashui Lv Zhongyuan Oil Painting Exhibition" in many overseas countries, and with his remarkable creative achievements, he was introduced back to China by the Central Academy of Fine Arts as a national key talent, hired as a professor and director of the research department of the School of Urban Design, continued to engage in the research and creation of contemporary oil paintings, and achieved a series of new creative achievements, which has a high reputation in the international and domestic art circles.
The great rivers and lakes nourished Lü Zhongyuan's pure feelings, and the mountains and rivers of his hometown became the carrier of his quest for the ideal of eternal life, and he used his unique painting language to realize this ideal of beauty.
▲"Heavenly Wind"
Lü Zhongyuan's shanhe works eliminate the details of the image of the miscellaneous, and directly take the morphological bones and life essence of the mountains and rivers, and integrate the oriental spirit into the paintings, so that the charm is contained in the colorful natural landscape, forming a treacherous self-vision, which is especially evident in the works depicting mountains. In works such as "Proud Cold", "The Story of the Mountain", "Shannan", "Condensed Mission" and so on, the forms of those mountains have completely personal power, and they either lie down or stand on the awe-inspiring wind and bone, and as Kant said, the sublime raises the power of our hearts beyond the usual ordinary. The sense of sublimeness produced by these images is different from the simple visual pleasure, but the meditation that sinks into the heart, and the pleasure transformed from the pain. Therefore, as an emotion, the sense of sublimeness does not look like a simple pleasure in the use of imagination, but a serious and persistent ideal pursuit. Moreover, the sense of sublimeness and attraction are not similar, the mind is not simply attracted to the object, but on the contrary is rejected by the object, and the pleasure generated by the sense of the sublime is not so much a positive pleasure as it is surprise or awe. In the face of Lü Zhongyuan's works on mountains and rivers, we are in awe of the miraculous creation of nature, the mother of nature that nourishes human beings, and her greatness and mystery are insurmountable to human beings. Lü Zhongyuan once compared nature to a "river without a shore", and she gave people "inexplicable panic and wandering, thoughts trembling, water waves crashing, and the accident in front of him seems to be unable to control the fate of the rushing current." In the face of nature, all the actual conflicts of interest and calculation of human beings seem trivial and humble. We are just passers-by in nature, following the infinite nature of nature with a limited life, and becoming the endless ideal of human life.
▲"Python Mountain High"
Oil on canvas 200×300cm
Fan Di'an, chairman of the China Artists Association and president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, wrote in the preface to the Lv Zhongyuan Painting Exhibition: "With saturated colors and modern forms of composition, he expressed the mountains and rivers as pure and elegant, making people have a kind of nostalgia for the past. By feeling the natural charm of the mountains and rivers, he sublimates the spiritual realm of the integration of man and nature, so that the image of the mountains and rivers in the work has a condensed and symbolic shape, bathed in the simplicity and tranquility of ancient times, and presents a restrained and powerful appearance. "The most valuable feature of Lü Zhongyuan's oil painting creation is not the rich form, color and expression, but the concentrated and simple emotion that he has accumulated continuously, a deep feeling for his hometown and country, which makes his works full of pure quality and strength.
Born in Shangqiu, Henan, Xu Ming was the resident secretary general of the Hunan Artists Association, and is now the director of the Art Center of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the director of the Hunan Creation Center of the China Artists Association, and a distinguished professor of Hunan University of Technology. Xu Ming's ink painting moves between the traditional brushwork and freehand, and the birds and flowers in the natural world are ingested into the pen at any time, vividly showing the life window of the natural world. He has a solid foundation in realism and freehand skills, which makes him comfortable in the creation of both brush strokes and ink paintings, and has achieved outstanding creative results. His works have participated in many national art exhibitions, and have won the gold medal of the National Arts and Crafts Exhibition and other awards at home and abroad, and his creation has been very active in recent years, and his creative achievements have been quite fruitful. Xu Ming's creative themes are very extensive, he has practiced white painting, and also painted local style figure paintings, and paid special attention to sketching, the nature of nature, and the achievement of creation. By carefully observing the vivid posture of birds, animals, insects and fish in nature and the vitality of plants, trees and flowers, the picture image has vitality, business and vitality, and achieves a vivid artistic effect.
▲《Spring Wind Map》
Xu Ming
Chinese painting 82x90cm
Xu Ming focused on expressing the interest of birds and animals, forming the artistic characteristics of his ink flower and bird paintings. Xu Ming is good at painting various animals such as roosters, buffaloes, wild ducks, birds, fish, kittens, golden rats, etc., or depicting them with thin brushes or writing with large brushes, writing gods in shape and god. He painted a large rooster or an old hen, the look is vivid, with thick ink and large brush to draw the tail of the chicken, with light ink or ochre to dye the wings of the rooster, with dark red meticulously draw the crown of the chicken, free and bold, the pen and ink are smooth, the rooster neck chirps, the hen cares for the chicks, the look is vivid, can be described as the best work of contemporary painting chickens. Through the accurate depiction of the eyes and expressions of the animals he paints, Xu Ming makes these small animals vivid and vivid, vivid and natural, and greatly enhances the artistic appeal of his works! "The Cow of the Baby" and "The Golden Bull Celebrate the New Year" use large freehand brush and ink to outline the loyal and simple nature of the cow, and a few strokes make the image of the cow jump on the paper. Xu Ming's freehand works showing lotus flowers, plum blossoms, bamboo stones, orchids and other themes are also full of characteristics. "Spring Snow Map", "QingXiang" and "Fragrant Snow Map" use the thick and twisted lines of the seal book to draw the branches of the plum tree to show the firm and indomitable nature of the plum tree. The light little plum blossoms exude the breath of proud snow bucket frost. Lotus-themed works such as "Supreme Coolness" and "Full of Breeze", large ink colors paint lotus leaves, delicate lotus stems, pink lotus flowers, showing the clear and elegant literati interest. And the bamboo he painted, the branches and leaves are simple and lush, fluttering in the wind. Lotus and ink bamboo themes, whether ancient or contemporary, have been painted by many famous artists, but Xu Ming's works can be simple in the big freehand, the large stroke and simple and thick unity, the combination of boldness and solemnity, forming his unique artistic style of freehand flowers.
▲"Spring Dawn"
Chinese painting 136×68cm
It is worth mentioning that Xu Ming's exploration of Chinese painting is multifaceted, and his brush flowers and birds are also very wonderful, whether it is the water ducks, golden chickens, or sheep and buffaloes he paints, the shape is accurate, the colors are elegant, reflecting the thick power and strong creative ability of his work strokes. It can be seen that Xu Ming is an excellent painter who is persistent and diligent in the creation of Chinese paintings and has achieved outstanding creative results.
—END—
Yangtze River Literature and Art, No. 2, 2022
Responsible Editor | Chen Jun
▲Bright |
Sunny, painter. Hubei Academy of Fine Arts graduated from Hubei Academy of Fine Arts with a master's degree in Chinese landscape painting. He is now a professional painter of Hubei Provincial Academy of Chinese Painting and the deputy secretary-general of Hubei Provincial Calligraphers and Painters Association.