Wang Yujue
Text/Yangcheng Evening News All-media reporter Wen Yi Zhu Shaojie Intern Yang Rui Correspondent Liao Jin
Photo/Courtesy of respondents
Wang Yujue is currently the art consultant of Guangdong Academy of Painting, the honorary president of Lingnan Academy of Painting, the founding vice president of the Chinese Painting Society, and the former president of Guangdong Academy of Painting and the secretary of the party group.
He is good at heavy color figure painting and freehand flower and bird painting. His works "Mountain Village Doctor" and "Farm Recruits" were selected for the Fourth National Fine Arts Exhibition; the work "Flower Girl" won the Silver Medal of the Sixth National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1984, the Second Lu Xun Literary and Art Award of Guangdong Province in 1986, and the work "Ran Ran" won the Silver Medal of the Seventh National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1989.
"Doctor Yamamura"
Walk into the studio:
One room has been accumulated for forty years
The drizzle is hazy, and the new branches spit green. The shore of Liuhua Lake in Guangzhou's Yuexiu District is already a scene of early spring. On the seventh floor of the former building of the Guangdong Academy of Painting located on the lakeside, there is a studio belonging to Wang Yujue, the former president of the Guangdong Academy of Painting.
Wang Yujue has been working in this studio since the building was completed in 1982, and has been working in this studio for 40 years. "At that time, our conditions were leading among the painting academies in the country, which had studios, housing, exhibition halls, living rooms, and so on." She recalled.
This cheerful female painter is the third president of the Guangdong Academy of Painting after Huang Xinbo and Guan Shanyue, and is also the "big sister" in the hearts of many people in the Guangdong painting circle. Wang Yujue's studio is no different from other full-time painters, and the shelves are filled with art books and reference books, as well as 40 years of creative accumulation, making the room seem cramped.
The studio has accompanied her through many important moments of her artistic career. In a corner of the room, there is a photo taken in 2017, which is the only photo of her solo exhibition so far. Wang Yujue is speaking at the exhibition symposium, when she was 80 years old, still enthusiastic and full of energy.
In 2017, Wang Yujue's classic works such as "Doctor Shancun", "Ran Ran" and "Flower Girl" appeared in the "Only New Destiny - Guangdong Art Centennial Exhibition" at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Almost at the same time, her first solo exhibition "Painting the Heart in Truth - Exhibition of Works Donated by Wang Yujue" was held at the Guangdong Museum of Art. The exhibition did not hold a grand opening ceremony, but only invited her classmates, living teachers and friends to quietly complete the donation of 61 personal classic masterpieces.
"Ran Ran"
Traditional Chinese a new look for object painting
Pushing open the yellowed white iron door of the studio, the first thing you see is a group photo placed at the entrance door, the photos of the people are full of youth, it is Wang Yujue's group photo with teachers and classmates when he graduated from Hankou Tie Middle School Junior High School. After graduation, Wang Yujue was admitted to the Central and South American College High School, and then was admitted to the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and became the first 5-year student.
In 1937, Wang Yujue was born in Chenzhou, Hunan Province, to a railway family, where his grandfather, father, and brother all drove trains. When she was a child, she often thought that it would be great to be a train driver when she grew up, "I didn't expect that I could go to the temple of art and make a little contribution to the culture and art of the country and the people." ”
Wang Yujue has loved to draw since she was a child, and the flowers and butterflies in her pen are vivid, and the big girls and aunts around her often come to her to draw embroidery patterns. When she was in middle school, her teacher discovered her talent for painting and encouraged her to take the exam. Wang Yujue, 17, took the 1955 entrance examination for the Central and South American Special High School, and only 40 students in the five provinces of Central and Southern China passed the examination.
During his studies, Wang Yujue has created many excellent works, "Mountain Village Doctor" and "Farm Recruits" have been selected for the "Fourth National Art Exhibition", the former is also collected by the National Art Museum of China, and exhibited overseas. These works have emerged throughout the country, allowing people to see a new look of traditional Chinese painting.
"How vast is life"
In the era of grand narrative prevalence, Wang Yujue has an extremely unique personal artistic face, which is inseparable from the full emotion she pours into her creation. Wang Yujue's masterpiece "Ran Ran" succinctly portrays a cute little baby, modeled by her son when she was more than two months old, and pinned on her guilt for not having time to take care of her children due to busy work. In the 1970s and 1980s, many of the themes of the painting world were scar stories, but Wang Yujue, who was optimistic by nature, did not want to indulge in pain, "I just want people to feel beautiful and feel the rising hope." ”
In the furnishings of Wang Yujue's studio, many objects are related to his son. On the walls hang calligraphy works made by his son for his mother entitled "Long Live Changle", freehand paintings of flowers and birds painted by his son, and posters of "Ran Ran". It is enough to glimpse her soft side as a professional painter and at the same time a mother.
Wang Yujue once said: "At that time, we went deep into life and established friendship with ordinary people and farmers, and we really felt these things from life before we could paint them." At that time, the entrance interview of the attached middle school asked to recite a poem, and Wang Yujue chose He Qifang's "How Vast Life Is" from the middle school textbook:
"Go to the most ordinary days, open your eyes in ordinary things, light the fire of others with your own fire, and discover the heart with your heart."
How vast life is. How fragrant life is. Wherever there is life, there is happiness and treasure. ”
At a symposium on solo exhibitions years later, Ms. Wang, 80, said the poem was a reflection of her art and personality.
Art Talk:
one
Yangcheng Evening News: "Mountain Village Doctor" is your early masterpiece, what is the background of its creation?
Wang Yujue: When I graduated from work, I went to the then Zhongshan County State-owned Pingsha Machinery Farm to experience life. The farm environment is very harsh, and the young intellectuals have to dig mud, build dams, and reclaim in the seaweed and mud pools that come out of the seawater, and ask for fertile land from the ocean. I was huddled with them in thatched huts, and one person occupied a position less than a meter wide, and everyone ate, lived, and worked together.
When they returned from labor, their hands and feet were often scratched, and they could only go to the small ditch to wash them, and then they tried to wipe them with cotton swabs and potions, and the conditions were very difficult.
I felt that the countryside needed doctors too much, and came back to create two paintings: "Farm Recruits" and "Mountain Village Doctor". The latter depicts a scene of a female zhiqing healing her wounds, which I initially named "Village Hygienist", and there really are no doctors in the countryside. Later, the teacher thought that this painting had a very southern taste and changed its name to "Mountain Village Doctor".
Yangcheng Evening News: "Mountain Village Doctor" later attracted widespread attention, and today it seems that where is its success?
Wang Yujue: We graduated in 1964, and the works of the graduates were all exhibited in Beijing, and "Doctor Shancun" received a very good evaluation. Not only newspapers and magazines in Guangdong published the painting, but also magazines and publications such as People's Daily and People's Pictorial. It was not until 1966 that the state introduced the concept of "barefoot doctors" and mobilized doctors to serve in the countryside.
In the past, the brush strokes were neat lines from head to toe, but if I want to reflect the life of modern people, I must express the breath of their lives and the spiritual outlook in labor. So when I paint, I use very neat lines to draw the main parts of the person's face, hands, etc., and when I go to the clothes and other places, I let go of some to make the picture more relaxed. This method of painting has been recognized by experts and is considered an innovation of gongbi painting.
two
Yangcheng Evening News: Critics have summarized "southern beauty" as an important feature of your character painting. How do you understand "Southern Beauty"?
Wang Yujue: I am a student of Guan Shanyue and Mr. Li Xiongcai, and their requirements for painting are very strict. Strictness is a prerequisite, but you can't put the painting to death. What I paint must be both a brush stroke and a modern atmosphere, which has its own style and appearance. Every year, I go to the countryside of Guangdong to experience life, and the characters I paint, whether men, women or children, are typical images of working people in the Pearl River Delta region. So they think my paintings have a "southern aesthetic."
Yangcheng Evening News: You use traditional Chinese gongbi figure paintings to express modern life themes, which are very popular with the public.
Wang Yujue: I have been painting for many years, and I have indeed painted some works that people recognize. For example, "Ran Ran" is based on what my son looked like when he was just over two months old. I was based on the sketch at that time, and later painted a Chinese painting, my son liked this picture very much, took the initiative to help me think of the title, he found the word "Ran Ran" in the dictionary, I think it is very good, it is used as a picture topic.
People really love this work, they think it is too similar to their children when they were young. When I paint with brush strokes, I use different brush and ink to express different objects and characters with different personalities. Chinese painting and Western painting are completely different, generally speaking, we write freehand and Western photography, but in fact, we also have to "write" a kind of "truth" of emotions and images, and the most important thing is to write everything in our hearts.
three
Yangcheng Evening News: Later, you switched from gongbi painting to freehand painting, how was this style conversion considered?
Wang Yujue: This process actually made me feel very "painful", and my original idea was to insist on drawing the gongbi painting. But later I served as the main person in charge of the painting academy, and there were many administrative affairs. At that time, I was a female painter in the academy, and the others were male painters, which was very challenging. I can only stick to my beliefs and serve everyone without selfish interests, so as to win trust and recognition, which has been done for more than ten years.
I didn't have much time to paint at that time. In order not to put down the brush in my hand, I used the evening and Sunday time to start creating freehand flowers and birds, but fortunately it was also recognized. I paint daffodils, lotus flowers, phalaenopsis orchids, etc., and everyone thinks that they have drawn a personal style. Because of their painting of daffodils, they also called me "King Narcissus".
I constantly demanded myself to adhere to the foundation of traditional painting, and at the same time an artist should also express the times. If you only use the same pattern to draw a hundred kinds of people, I don't quite approve of it.
Each of my paintings has not departed from the lines and expression methods of Chinese painting, adhering to the color and taste of the East, but when dealing with the figure paintings of each period, I try to use new techniques to express them, and some techniques may come from the West to express "everything in the heart".