"Singing the Spring of the Motherland" (Chinese painting) Cheng Shifa
"Spring Ploughing Map" (Chinese painting) Ge Xianglan, Liu Danzhai
"Spring Sowing" (Chinese painting) by Jiang Zhaohe
Spring Ploughing Diagram (Watercolor) Ancient Yuan
Winter and spring come, everything recovers, and the fresh breath ripples in the mountains and rivers. In this beautiful spring light, hard-working people write the stories of spring one after another. In the vast and long history of the Chinese nation, there are too many stories about spring recorded in poetry, music and pictures. When the wind moves in the spring dynasty, the decoration of early warblers and new swallows makes people feel relaxed. The beauty of spring in the picture is the most intuitive and moving, the Song Dynasty landscape painter Guo Xi not only created the classic "Early Spring Map", but also recorded his impression of spring in the painting theory: "Spring Rongyi", "Spring Mountain is light and smiling", "Spring Mountain smoke and clouds are continuous, people are happy".
At the Yan'an Literary and Art Symposium in May 1942, the artistic purpose of "literature and art serving the workers, peasants, and soldiers" was put forward, and the founding of New China in 1949 provided a broader world for the practice of this artistic purpose. Undoubtedly, this purpose is an epoch-making milestone, and this new model of allowing art to always retain the source of life has opened up a spring of the aesthetics of the times. Let's appreciate the "Spring Era" after the founding of New China through some classic paintings about spring.
Spring to the earth grass and trees know
China's hardships and embarrassments for more than a hundred years since modern times have made artists look forward to "returning to the land in spring". Xu Beihong's "Kyushu Nothing to Do And Happy To Cultivate" was painted in 1942, before the victory of the War of Resistance, affectionately depicting his yearning for the prosperity of the Taiping Dynasty, which is another work of great historical significance after his creation of "Yugong Moving Mountains" in 1940, shaping the spirit of Yugong and his family to move mountains with determination and perseverance, and the purpose of the struggle and struggle of "Yugong Moving Mountains" is to "cultivate without anything to do in Kyushu". The two paintings have a strong realist allegory in the choice of subject matter, but they use the modeling and artistic conception of classicism in the form of expression.
Regarding the creation of paintings on the theme of spring after the founding of New China, we may wish to call it "spring in art classics", mainly singing to the people and life, with many ordinary warm feelings. Different from themes such as revolution and struggle, in these spring paintings full of the atmosphere of the times, the enthusiasm of themes such as "Southern Expedition and Northern War" is no longer pursued, but replaced by a thriving fresh and peaceful. In the spring when everything is in ruins, along with the people happily cultivating and working in the fields, the painter's brush and ink are also "kissing" the earth. Among the mountains and the ridges of the fields, everywhere shines with the selfless warmth of the spring sun and the painter's rich thinking. This is rooted in the people's artistic feelings, both the simplicity of cultivating the land, but also the romance of looking up at the sky, and the melody of endeavor makes people full of endless hope, reflecting the new understanding of realism and realism by painters of the new era. It is a high degree of integration of skillful realism skills and freehand spirit, and the first thing we see is not the appearance of a certain person, not even the difference between flower and bird paintings, figure paintings, and landscape paintings, but a new "holistic" atmosphere of the times, that is, the desire of people who have experienced the darkness before dawn for brilliant sunshine, and the expectation of people who have experienced cold winter for spring and warm flowers. Today, we can still feel the passion between the brush and ink when the painter creates from the scale, and feel the eternal spiritual power in the moment when the labor scene is frozen.
Boundless light is new for a while
Spring picture scroll, depicting the breath and melody of spring, since the founding of New China, based on the realism and literature and art to serve the workers, peasants and soldiers of the creative concept, the picture first has obvious regional characteristics, such as the north, southern Xinjiang, hills, water towns, etc., the composition follows the focus perspective, the character modeling follows the concept of realism, and flexibly use the concept of scattered perspective and image modeling to better integrate the literati freehand brushwork.
Cheng Shifa's "Singing the Spring of the Motherland" was created in 1957 and was selected for the special program of "Party History in Art Classics" in the centenary of the founding of the Party in 2021, and it is also a beautiful picture depicting the theme of spring. Cheng Shifa inherits the romantic and open temperament of Haipai calligraphy and painting, and his paintings fully integrate the artistic elements of comic strips, New Year paintings, illustrations and other paintings, and are unique in terms of characters, flowers and birds. As a representative of the field of Xingong brush stroke creation, the painting won the first prize of the first national youth art exhibition in 1957. The picture adopts a panoramic composition, the theme is profound and clear, closely related to the literary and artistic policies of the time, due to the artist's skillful ability to draw lines and color, everywhere reveals a free and lively creative sentiment. In the painting, the background is as clear as a wash, the spring mountains in the distance are continuous, the auspicious clouds are surrounded, and there is both the lushness of pine cypress and the fragrance of peach and plum in the near distance, but the peach tree and plum tree are in the main position, and the pine tree and cypress tree are in the foil position, which is a very important point of the author's conception, and the main theme of spring is set off with the splendid peach and plum competition. The protagonist of the painting is an old rural mother wearing a square scarf, her back to the flower-studded tree, singing loudly, the old man on the right side of the picture holds the allegro and beats, and the youth on the right and back of his right side play the flute affectionately, and the audience includes workers, farmers, soldiers and intellectuals, as well as primary school students and other children, both men and women, young and old, all dressed brightly, gathered together, and enjoyed themselves. The lambs and pigeons below the picture symbolize auspiciousness and peace, and the tender bamboo and orchid symbolize peace and beauty; the ripples of water on the right side of the picture lead to the far side; in the distance, there is a tower symbolizing modernization. The whole painting uses realistic techniques, the composition is full, the color is bright, and the beauty is like a poetic scene, which can be called a vivid reproduction of Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Origin" in the new society, but this peach blossom source is no longer the mysterious illusory world of "separated from outsiders" and "no longer gets the way" in the original classic, but the spring of the whole people that is celebrated by the whole world and shared by Shenzhou.
Wei Zixi's "The Rejuvenation of the Earth", created in 1959, depicts scenes of people ploughing in the fields during the peach blossom season. Wei Zixi is one of the main representatives of the New Jinling School, he has a deep traditional skill in landscape painting and figure painting, adhering to the principle of "one hand reaching out to life, one hand reaching out to tradition", he has extensively and deeply immersed himself in life, and absorbs nutrition from propaganda paintings, comic strips, New Year paintings and even stage sets and art design drawings. The picture adopts a composition method that combines far-reaching and overlooking, cleverly using the principle of perspective between the East and the West, the close-up view is a high terrace, peach and plum, and in the distance is the fertile spring wind, "all the rye is green", the people in the middle scene are concentrating on labor, and the roar of the machine is faintly heard in the distance. The most ingenious is the depiction of the high terrace surrounded by peach and plum nearby, guided by a small road in the lower right corner of the picture, where the flowers and trees are dense, and relatively private and quiet, which can be called the "boudoir in the field", five young women are resting between the flowers, they are sitting or lying down, they are looking forward to echoing, laughing, dressed simply but colorful, no matter how busy the labor, can not stop their curiosity, love of beauty, read a poem, a flower, have the whole spring.
Thousands of purples and thousands of reds are always spring
Cheng Shifa's "Singing the Spring of the Motherland" and Wei Zixi's "The Rejuvenation of the Earth" adopt a panoramic full composition, and some others are the composition and performance of the small scene style, and the depiction of spring is relatively more free and spontaneous, which is more freehand and interesting, which is a different reconstruction of the spirit of Chinese painting.
Jiang Zhaohe and "Spring Sowing" adopt the method of portraying individual characters, and maximize the "divine portrayal" of the character image, which not only exerts the expressive charm of Eastern and Western character paintings to the extreme, but also takes into account the costumes of the characters and the atmosphere of the times of the activities. Fu Baoshi, Song Wenzhi and Wei Zixi's 1957 collaboration "Glorious Participation in Agricultural Production" is more spontaneous, three painting masters who are well versed in the essence of traditional Chinese pen and ink join forces in this production scene, Fu Baoshi's pen and ink lines like "spear euphorbia" waving up and down between the rulers, is the spiritual portrayal of "dare to teach the sun and the moon for a new day". Ge Xianglan and Liu Danzhai's 1960 cooperation of "Spring Ploughing Map" is not as arbitrary as "Glorious Participation in Agricultural Production", but another attempt was made, the painting depicts the scene of farming in the paddy field in Jiangnan, a tree of peach blossoms protruding from the outside of the picture is full of spring charm, and the farthest with a very light brush and ink depicts the person planting seedlings in the paddy field as a background cushion, the author uses thick and round pen and ink to highlight the image of a buffalo in front, which moves steadily in the paddy field sprinkled with sunshine, showing the traditional ink tension. The most eye-catching thing is that the person who supports the old man is no longer limited to men, but replaced by young women, which not only fully takes into account the color contrast between the two groups of cattle, rakes and people, but also a profound new change in the weaving customs of men and women in China in the past, and women are no longer just a flexible image between boudoirs or kitchen stoves, but have both a healthy physique and the beauty of the creative spirit. The whole painting depicts the water town hymn in spring in a very simple and generalized pen and ink.
In fact, there are many painters who use various forms to depict the weather of spring and the ideals in their hearts, and the watercolor work "Spring Ploughing Map" of Gu Yuan is light and elegant, and the composition is simple, but it presents the vitality of spring. Professor Wang Songyu of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts's "Intentional Spring Breeze and Material Enhancement" retains the typical literati pen and ink interest and the exploration of new art forms, with handsome branches and leaves, and five or six sailing ships are cleverly embellished among the dense tree shadows. The positive expansion of artistic aesthetics and artistic expression by a large number of outstanding painters in that era when society continued to develop and progress is worthy of our serious reference.
These paintings, which have both a fiery life and a rushing inspiration, can immediately bring the viewer into the world of spring and clearly perceive the pulse of the times. The wheel of history will always move forward, and although today's people will no longer wear the old clothes, and will gradually replace those ancient ploughs, rakes, harrows, and rakes in production, the spirit of the times that leads the way is an eternal wealth. As long as there is a spring breeze blowing over the head, our brushes will continue to depict spring, and there will be more "spring stories".
(Author: Jia Jia, Lecturer, School of Fine Arts and Design, Tianjin Normal University; Jiang Jinjun, Professor, School of Fine Arts and Design, Tianjin Normal University)
Source: Guangming Daily