The well-known painter Lu Lu, who is nearly eighty years old, has always lived in simplicity, and due to eye diseases, he has rarely written, and in recent years he has devoted himself to the theory and thinking of Chinese painting and calligraphy.
Ling Lizhong, director of the Calligraphy and Painting Research Department of the Shanghai Museum, recently visited Mr. Lu's apartment, starting from the introduction of Shangbo's special exhibition "Ten Thousand Years of Changchun: Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Art Special Exhibition", and discussed relevant topics such as "How Chinese Culture Really Goes Global" and "Restoration and Suggestions of the Current Theory of Chinese Painting". Lu Lu believes that the culture of Chinese painting is greater than the painterliness, and the current Chinese painting must really pay attention to the theoretical restoration and construction of national painting with pen and ink as the main expression, "We must use our own theory to interpret our own works, only if we have an understanding of the art classics that have been handed down to this day, can we let others understand." ”
Ling Lizhong: From June 22 to December 5, 2021, the Shanghai Museum planned and held the "Ten Thousand Years of Changchun: Shanghai Past Dynasties Calligraphy and Painting Art Special Exhibition", which is an important measure to respond to the brand construction of "Shanghai Culture", excavate the calligraphy and painting resources in the collection, inherit and carry forward the red culture, Shanghai school culture and Jiangnan culture, and is also a vivid practice of Shangbo to do practical things for the masses with heart and soul. Soon after the opening of this exhibition, it was successively awarded the 2021 Theme Exhibition Recommendation Project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage "Promoting China's Excellent Traditional Culture and Cultivating the Core Values of Socialism", and the "Chinese Culture Going Global Special Support Fund Selection Project" in Shanghai in 2021. During the exhibition, the guests of the Ninth World Forum on Sinology, co-sponsored by the Information Office of the State Council and the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, also specially observed the exhibition, and the guests praised: "The beauty of art is like the beauty of Shanghai, the beauty of China." Some guests here saw the inheritance and integration of ancient China and modern China and said: "I hope that the world can better understand and study China through the window of Shanghai; Chinese stories and culture can also be better disseminated to the world." “
2021, Shanghai Museum, entrance to "Ten Thousand Years of Changchun: Special Exhibition of Calligraphy and Painting Art in Shanghai Dynasties"
Dong Qichang's "Album of Villas in the South Village of Du Qiong" exhibited by Shangbo has the sentence "Min Yuanye of the Wumen School of Painting"
Lu Lu: This exhibition must have been taken for granted. To carry forward national culture, we must first carry forward the national spirit and then think about where the highlights of our national culture are on the basis of national self-confidence. Civilization, as the name suggests, is the high and low elegance of culture and art, and it is the most emblematic highlight of a country and a nation, and its significance is greater than other aspects of society.
Ling Lizhong: As a Chinese national painting, what are the highlights of chinese national painting compared to other types of paintings in the world?
Lu Lu: I think that in the history of traditional Chinese painting, national painting with pen and ink as the main form of expression, its highlight is that its culture is greater than painterliness, and in my theory, it is "Chinese painting" with the name of the country. The "Chinese painting" with the name of the country is an oriental painting that particularly emphasizes the cultural spirit of the Chinese nation, which requires that the cultural meaning in the painting is greater than the meaning of the painting itself, so the "six laws" take "vivid rhyme" as the first. Among them, especially literati painting, it is a comprehensive embodiment of ancient Chinese civilization in painting. As early as more than a thousand years ago, Gu Kaizhi of the Six Dynasties put forward the painting theory of "moving to think of miao", and from his theory combined with the artistic realm of "painting in poetry and poetry in painting" said when evaluating the artistic works of Wang Wei, a great poet and painter of the Tang Dynasty, it was confirmed that in my words, "qian" - that is, using the poet's way of thinking, "wonderful" - is to achieve the artistic realm of poetry. When expressing objective objects, this kind of artist uses his personal cultural cultivation and realm to elevate and transform into a new artistic realm. Similarly, this way of thinking predates the similar creative ideas proposed by Gombrich in the West, and is more true, better, and more beautiful. From Gu Kaizhi's theory of the wonderful thinking, we can push the history of Chinese literati painting forward for more than a thousand years, in the history of Chinese painting in the past, it began with the concept of scholar painting put forward by su Dongpo, a great scholar of the Song Dynasty, and now we can fully realize that the poet's way of thinking in Gu Kaizhi's theory of reimagining and thinking is the earliest beginning of the history of Chinese literati painting. His concept is also based on China's thousands of years of cultural accumulation, and this creative concept that gives cultural precipitation is much higher than the Western artistic image of science created by the way scientists think.
In the Yuan Dynasty, Ni Zhan's "Autumn Ji Tu of Yuzhuang", whose paintings are considered to be the works of Chinese landscape painting
Specifically, some of the earlier realist artists in the West, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, were mostly familiar with or attached importance to human medicine, so they were able to portray the human body image in detail from the perspective of human anatomy. Another example is the Impressionist painters such as Monet and Renoir, who keenly observed the feeling of people and objects under the flickering of light. Another example is the Cubism of Matisse and Picasso, which reminds me of the image of an object observed in the prism commonly known as the kaleidoscope we played as children. As for the paintings of various types of contemporary art that are popular in the West, if you are familiar with or pay attention to the scientific research practices of various scientists at present, it is not difficult to find out how similar the images of their artists are to the images presented by scientists on the screen during scientific experiments, and some can be said to be the partial enlargement of these images. In contrast, these scientific artistic images created by the way scientists think can be imagined in their works. I think it is Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and other Fauvist painters who have paid attention to absorbing the humanistic spirit in Oriental painting, including China, and have more depth of thought, as detailed in my 2017 article entitled "Literati Painting is the Crown Jewel in the History of World Painting".
Gauguin's Van Gogh Painting sunflowers, in the van Gogh Museum collection
The Academy of Painters, circa 1600, Pietro Francesco Alberti, Getty Research Institute
Therefore, to carry forward the national culture, we must first carry forward the national spirit, and we must not be arrogant and self-effacing. In my memory, there are many past events, and it seems a little ashamed to say that we who came from the thirties and forties, when the curious magic and dioramas that were popular at that time, did not know until we later entered the school that this was nothing more than a simple chemical reaction and a physical phenomenon. In the sixties and seventies, when political movements arose in our country, nothing could come in the West. After the opening up in the 1980s, The aesthetic concept of Gombrich was popular in the cultural and artistic circles, which greatly impacted our own aesthetic theory, resulting in a great impact and depreciation of Chinese painting with pen and ink as the main form of expression in various art academies. In the 1980s and 1990s, in the domestic children's food market, there was a popular imported food for children called Harik, which made a lot of money for Chinese children. So then there was no market. After the 1990s, KFC occupied the Chinese food market again, you think, chicken wings are originally a delicious food, after fried in oil, added a new flavor, what is so great about this? Chinese flattened the cold rice and fried in oil, the Shanghainese call it rice cake, isn't it very tasty, not to mention fritters and hemp balls. If you foreigners can put my hat in oil and fry it and turn it into delicious food, then I admire you. All these things, so we must have national self-confidence and dignity. “
Ling Lizhong: In your opinion, in promoting national painting, is there one thing that we must seriously reflect on?
Lu Lu: We must first pay attention to the theoretical restoration and construction of national painting with pen and ink as the main expression, we must use our own theory to interpret our own works, only if we have an understanding of the art classics that have been handed down to this day, can we let others understand. In the process of inheriting and teaching Chinese painting, I found that our excellent traditional ethnic paintings were flawed in theory, and our ancestors were too popular. They have left many excellent works and cultural stories in the process of artistic thinking and creation, and they also reflect an excellent artistic behavior in the pen and ink image of their works, but they disdain to make their own successful experiences serious theoretical thinking, rise to theory, and some only make some understated sighs on the inscriptions of their own works, which brings great obstacles to the inheritance and education of our descendants. The tradition has to be called "can only understand can not be passed on", to rely on the scholars themselves to understand the divine understanding, this is unrealistic, the person who learns to paint can not be a god, so in comparison, the Western painting theory is relatively more scientific and complete than ours. This theoretical defect in the history of Chinese painting has also led to a large extent to the misunderstanding and confusion in the current Education of Chinese Painting, which actually restricts the development of Chinese painting. Therefore, we must pay attention to the thinking and construction of traditional Chinese painting theory, and only with our own pen and ink theory can we interpret and promote our own works of art. Chinese painting with pen and ink as the main form of expression, as long as the artist corrects his creative attitude and devotes himself wholeheartedly to the creation of the work, the calligraphy skills in their pen and ink will be concentrated in the pen and ink form of the work through their own spirit, so the pen and ink in their works are in a living state; on the contrary, the contemporary those deliberately produced all kinds of color ink decorative paintings and market popular line paintings, the pen and ink in their works have no life state to speak of. This concept of pen and ink life is easier to understand than the so-called "pen nature" in the traditional painting concept. The pen and ink form left in the image of the work should have a pen and ink rhythm, and only by fully recognizing that the pen and ink have a living state, many problems can be solved.
Portrait of the Eight Mountain People - "A Small Portrait of a Mountain"
Qing Shitao's "Self-written Seed Pine Diagram Small Photograph" volume (partial) Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
For example, in the case of identification, we can store the works of art of different artists as a kind of data using modern scientific scanning techniques to distinguish the authenticity of different artists, which is more personalized cultural value in appreciation and appraisal than the current direct reference to data, historical materials, materials and other aspects. The rhythm of brush and ink left by different artists in the expression of art forms, combined with some personal different main themes in his life's works, is the same as music. Taking the folk song composers Wang Luobin, Lei Zhenbang and Shi Guangnan as an example, the works of the three of them in their lives, people familiar with music can distinguish that their composition styles are not the same, perhaps slightly different at different ages, but they can still distinguish their different main themes, the pen and ink forms presented in the painter's works, and the rhythm of the pen and ink is also the same. Another example is the issue of education, from the life state of pen and ink to figure out the artist's creative mentality and emotions at that time, and then combined with the artist's background, but also to figure out his personal temperament and academic background. Then to learn all kinds of art, I think reading is the most important, the Qing Dynasty calligrapher Yi Bingshou said that reading can "change temperament, cultivate the spirit", the temperament of each artist is superior and inferior, as a scholar, choosing a genre and painter who is close to himself is the best way for himself. But some people's temperament has a certain distance from this genre and painters, what to do? You can change your temperament by reading books and raise your temperament to a similar degree, which solves the educational problem of Chinese painting.
Yi Bingshou Lishu Lian," "Changing Temperament, Cultivating Sexual Spirit"
Ling Lizhong: So, what do you think are the core values of history and the core values of theory?
For painting, an artist can only put forward a new creative concept and provide a new artistic image.
For example, my predecessor teachers, He Tianjian and Lu Yushao, two landscape painters, on the understanding and grasp of the brush and ink method in traditional Chinese painting, Mr. He Tianjian is obviously the most powerful landscape painter of his generation in the country. However, in terms of creation, he did not like Mr. Lu Yushao, in the sketching and creation of landscape painting, he finally formed his own artistic image of heavenly light and cloud shadow, so the historical value of the two of them in the history of Chinese painting is self-evident, so the reason and value of Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, and Guan Liang are constantly concerned and studied by future generations. For thinking about the core values of theory, I think we must have the spirit of seeking truth like scientists. For example, like the origin of life, life scientists continue to decompose biological proteins, and finally find the result of the combination of carbon and water. The earth was born when there was no life, it in the long-term cosmic movement, under the action of the atmosphere under the action of continuous weathering, and finally the surface of the ground appeared sand, the carbon in the sand was exposed, carbon in the air under the action of water, into primitive organisms, after tens of billions of years, there are today's various creatures and human land appear. Therefore, our theoretical research is also like this, for each problem must be decomposed and decomposed again with the spirit of a scientist, to find out its potential laws and essences, you reinterpret other people's theories only theoretical workers, not theoreticians in the true sense. For example, in Marx's Capital, he realized from the surplus value of social development that the existence of classes and the inevitable struggle of class struggle are realized. Similarly, the essence of traditional Chinese painting is that the culture is greater than the painterly, especially the literati painting, which is the comprehensive embodiment of ancient Chinese civilization in painting.
Ling Lizhong: A young scholar from Hong Kong saw the introduction of three theoretical books that you have compiled and published for you in recent years by the Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, namely "On Lu Painting" (I and II) and "Comments on Pen and Ink".
Lu: In 2016, the first edition of "On the Painting of Lu Lu I" was sold out less than 3 months after printing, and in the fourth month, the publishing house reprinted 1500 copies. Therefore, when "LuHua Theory II" was published in 2018, they increased the print number. Last year's "Pen and Ink Review" was raised to the print run. Because my eyes are not good, most of the articles in these books are recorded and organized by the editors through recordings.
To be fair, I have not done anything major in my life, and in the first thirty years, under the influence of the "pen and ink is going to be lost" that the elderly man has always lamented, I have seriously practiced and grasped the traditional pen and ink. In the last thirty years, on the basis of pen and ink understanding and grasping, I have made serious theoretical thinking, although the current society's cognition of me is mainly in these two aspects, but I myself am most interested in and the most conceited is poetry.
In fact, as a person, one thing that has always made me very happy about poetry is that on August 1, 2020, Chen Mian, the artistic director of Shanghai Duoyunxuan Auction Company, called me and said that there was a scholar from the department of Chinese of Peking University who had always wanted to come to know me, and he had come to Shanghai three times thirty years ago and had not found me. I said why? He said that when he was studying in the department of Chinese of Peking University in the 1980s, his teacher, Mr. Wang Li, an expert in ancient Chinese, quoted your poems during class, and later, mr. Lin Sanzhi in Nanjing also heard praise for your poems, so he has always had a curiosity and admiration for you. I asked, how did you come to me? He said that he had come to see me at night at the Jiuqu Bridge in Yuyuan Garden. I said how come you can go over there at night to find me? The scholar said that you have a pair of "high lying low at dusk, reading at night and spring dawning." "I said it was a poem I wrote, and it wasn't entirely like that in real life. Because he also loved poetry and painting, he later asked a friend of RongBaozhai in Beijing, and through him contacted Chen Mian of Duoyunxuan Auction Company. So after he came that day, his devotion touched me very much, and I also thanked Wang Li and Lin Sanzhi, the two predecessors.