source:
Pingliang Daily
□ Li Lijun
On April 28, 2004, taking the opportunity to participate in the "Kuntong Cultural Forum", Mr. Shui Tianzhong, who had been away from Pingliang for 25 years, revisited his hometown, and when I interviewed him for the article "Wind and Rain in the Water And The Road of Life in the Water Sky", he took the time to splash ink to give ink treasure to Pingliang's old confidant. He gave Zhang Tao eight big characters that were thick and soft, like dragons out of the water: Chivalrous Bone Soft Intestine, Sword and Guts Qin Heart. Mr. Shui Tianzhong, an authority in the domestic art critics, who served as the director of the Fine Arts Research Institute of the China Academy of Arts and the editor-in-chief of the "China Art Newspaper" and the "Art History", gave Zhang Tao the ink treasure, which I thought was not only an encouragement, praise and expectation for Zhang Tao, but also a very elegant positioning of Zhang Tao's artistic pursuit and artistic personality, so I have the right to borrow it as the title of this article.
I have known Zhang Tao for 30 years, the initial interaction was limited to the time of drunken ear heat, everyone borrowed wine to say some words with their hearts and lungs, and the difference between the arrogance and dry clouds of others is that Zhang Tao, who has always been implicit in Sven, wine can not let him change much, at most, he will impromptuly talk about topics related to the art of calligraphy and painting, and I feel that he often integrates with a very warm atmosphere. In 2006, on a day when the autumn was high and the geese flew south, the two of us, along with a group of friends in the Pingliang cultural and artistic circle, walked into Inner Mongolia, where "the wind blows grass and low cattle and sheep", in the black rock beach under the Yin Mountains, the Hetao Distillery in Hangjinhouqi, the lake in Bayannaoer, and the yurt located in the lonely wilderness, every place is often accompanied by Mongolian long tune and the desolate and beautiful music of the horse head piano, suitable for expressing pride and ambition to experience the happiness of life, a long time to promote knee-to-knee talk, open heart exchanges. Let me deeply understand Zhang Tao, who had emerged in the field of calligraphy and painting in Pingliang at that time: the subtlety of his appearance could not weaken his ambition to write his own heavy ink in the sacred art hall, the inheritance of the three generations of calligraphy and painting families, the artistic standard of "the integration of poetry, calligraphy and painting into one and the same progress" that was the most respected since ancient times and the present, and the efforts to approach in the infinite yearning of the artistic standard of "the integration of poetry, calligraphy and painting into one and the same time", and the local art circle of "three or five years of leadership in each style", he could step on an artistic road with his own style. It was a dream that had always been in his heart. Artists need dreams, and only when they have dreams can they touch the true mysterious door of art. More than ten years have passed, and Zhang Tao has taken a dashing and solid step to realize his dream.
Born in 1968, Zhang Tao, pen name Xueqiao, studied Chinese painting under Mr. Cheng Dali of the National Academy of Painting of China, and is now a member of the Gansu Provincial Artists Association, a member of the Chinese Painting Art Committee of the Provincial Artists Association, the vice chairman of the Pingliang Artists Association, and the chairman of the Kuntong District Literary Association. As for his achievements in the art of calligraphy and painting, I can only choose one or two of the most important ones: his works have participated in the Third Provincial Food System Calligraphy and Painting Exhibition and won the first prize; they have won the second prize and the first prize of the "Kuntong Literature and Art Award" in Pingliang City; they have won the third prize of the "Calligraphy and Painting Exhibition of CPPCC Members of Gansu Province celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the People's Political Consultative Conference"; the Chinese painting "Smoke in the Foothills of the Mountains" has won the first prize of the Gansu Fine Arts Works Exhibition "Welcoming the Eighteenth National Congress and Entering Kuntong"; the works have been selected for the "Longshan, Longshui, and Gansu Provincial Art Works Exhibition" organized by the Provincial Federation of Literature and Literature and the Provincial Artists Association. Longren won the third prize of the Fifth Gansu Provincial Professional Painting Academy Works Exhibition; in 2019, his works were selected for the first national joint exhibition of calligraphy and painting in 13 cities, counties and districts in nine provinces. Over the years, his Chinese painting works have been repeatedly published in magazines and newspapers such as Gansu Daily, Shenzhou Poetry And Calligraphy And Painting Newspaper, Silk Road Series, Gansu Culture, Pingliang Daily, etc., and have been included in some albums, and his biography has been reported and introduced by many media reports and columns such as The Central Broadcasting Network, Xinhua Net, China Net, Tencent News, etc., and his commentaries, poems and essays have been scattered in magazines and newspapers such as Gansu Literature and Art, Democratic Consultation Daily, and Pingliang Daily.
As the saying goes: "Book-obsessed people must work, and art fools must have good skills." "If people want to do a good job, they must first be obsessed with it, and artists who expect to make achievements in the field of art must have the heart to be obsessed with love." Zhang Tao is of course no exception, but his connection with art may be different from many people, that is, the contamination of family origins and the unique and beautiful chemical reactions that occur to him. Therefore, to understand Zhang Tao's artistic feelings, the retracement of his family origin is a content that cannot be bypassed.
Zhang Tao's great-grandfather Zhang Guanxue, a student at the end of the Qing Dynasty, served as a teacher in Pingliang Middle School, Pingliang Normal School, and Pingliang Girls' Division for more than 30 years. His lifelong love of calligraphy, painting and seal carving, calligraphy for the first time Yan Zhenqing, Liu Gongquan, late Han Li, deep Cao Quan monument charm, grass to Sun Guoting, Mi Fu pen meaning, painting works are good at landscape, flowers and birds, especially "Lu Yan" is famous and has a fine product was selected in 1950 to Moscow to participate in the exhibition. As a famous scholar of the previous generation of Long, Zhang Gong, who was upright and honest, indifferent to fame and fortune, and the calligraphers and painters of the same period, Wang Ruonan and Zeng Luzhai, became friends with Mo Rebellion by writing books on painting, chanting and singing, and later together with Liu Fangming, they were praised by the people of the time as "The Four Houses of Longshang", and became famous for a while. His grandfather, Zhang Shaoguan, graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the National Northwest Normal University in his early years and worked as an art teacher at Guyuan Middle School, Pingliang Girls' Normal School, and Pingliang Middle School. Influenced by his father Zhang Guanxue, he was fascinated by the study of calligraphy and painting and jinshi, often went deep into the Kuntong Mountains to sketch, and pursued the high degree of artistic contention and nature in the clear sound of landscapes and the morning bell and twilight drum. After the great setbacks in his life, he regained his artistic new life, leaving behind a large number of fine works of calligraphy and painting, his Chinese painting works are mainly landscapes, flowers and birds, the picture shows the colorful and colorful yin and sunny changes of nature between wrinkles, rubbing, dots and dyes, full of literati and scholars, indifferent and superb, the ancient atmosphere and interest of the world, and the artistic style of the self is distinct and unique. Uncle Zhang Weizhong is the third generation of Zhang Men painters after Zhang Guanxue and Zhang Shaoguan, influenced by family studies, his works are eclectic, simple and thick, and his landscape paintings are towering and imposing; flower and bird paintings are elegant and interesting, fascinating; character paintings are natural and wonderful; oil paintings, watercolors, and gouache works have a strong breath of life, or free and flexible, or solemn and magnificent. Her mother, Guo Lanfang, engaged in calligraphy and painting and literary creation activities in her early years, and has so far more than 500 works (articles) appeared in newspapers and magazines, and in her later years, she devoted herself to the study of calligraphy and painting, and many works participated in related exhibitions.
The so-called Shuxiang Mendi, Zhang Taojia is an outstanding representative. Born and raised in such a family with a strong artistic atmosphere, a door style different from ordinary people's families, and a family of calligraphy and painting, Zhang Tao has the unique natural advantage of accepting artistic enlightenment and dyeing that many people cannot reach - although the family has suffered with the impact of incomprehensible political storms, he has also struggled with the boat of fate. The deeper significance of this advantage also lies in the fact that it makes Zhang Tao's process of receiving art education different from those who are half-way teachers or Wu Zi self-speculating and practicing hard to try to make a splash, that is, with deep traditional culture as the foundation, subtle and silent process. With such an education, it is only natural for the trainee to develop a broad vision and profound ability to create art. With the enrichment of experience and the maturity of his thinking, Zhang Tao has a deeper and deeper understanding of the great value and significance of family learning in the cultivation of his own growth, and his feeling of gratitude is deepening, which is also the driving force for him to persevere in the struggle goal he has set for himself.
Although poetry, calligraphy and painting are several unique categories in the field of art, but in essence they are common, from ancient times to the present, those artists who are immersed in traditional Chinese art, many people regard the feeling of appreciating the charm and interest of various art disciplines as a kind of spiritual sustenance and the meaning of life. In Pingliang, someone once joked with Zhang Tao that he was an artist in Pingliang who "has good calligraphy in the painter, good poetry in the calligrapher, and good printing in the poet", although it is a joke, it also confirms from the side that Zhang Tao's artistic taste is extensive, artistic aesthetics and pursuits are extraordinary. The art of painting and calligraphy, which is mainly attacked by poetry, allows the artistic conception of calligraphy and painting art to be expressed in the poems, which is integrated and complementary to each other, which not only increases the thickness of learning, but also makes his calligraphy and painting poetry show a humanistic connotation and artistic charm of style.
For the artist, if he can establish his own true aesthetic pursuit and adherence to the principles, he must be a person who has realized the three ambiguities in creation. When Zhang Tao took the requirements for poetry in Sikong Tu's "Poetry" as a guideline, he had his own profound understanding of the artistic concept of "the creation of foreign teachers and the source of the heart". Since anchoring himself on the road of art, his focus is on Chinese painting. In the understanding and practice of Wei Jin's "Landscape and Water Changshen" theory, he knows that Chinese painting must express and convey "qi rhyme" and "realm", so that the true interest of landscape is expressed in the charm and temperament of landscape, with a pure and natural state of mind and indifferent and tranquil character, fantasy and ever-changing natural scenes, are all thoughtful and allegorical, integrated into the author's strong subjective emotional color, pen and ink are endowed with character and emotion, this aesthetic creation is different from any kind of art, the author renders the picture, whether ethereal, Composure or vastness and depth must be completed with the realm and abstract meaning presented by ink color. To this end, he has repeatedly pondered the vocabulary of brush and ink in traditional Chinese painting and continuously drawn nutrients from the masterpieces of the sages, and has made every effort to purify the pen and ink brush meaning, forming his own unique pen and ink characteristics, and his paintings are full of elegant leisurely, peaceful and quiet meaning, reflecting the gentle and elegant spirit of traditional Chinese culture. For Zhang Tao, who has evolved his thoughts into a subtle and warm picture language, he has experienced a long process of painstakingly seeking and finding a way of artistic expression that can be expressed directly to the chest.
In traditional Chinese aesthetics, the Confucian landscape concept represented by "the knower enjoys the water, the benevolent Leshan" links the "virtues" of the landscape with the praise of the ideal personality of the person himself, and creates the aesthetic of the humanistic landscape on the mainland, and the public enjoys the beautiful landscape, retreats, seeks immortality, asks questions, yonghuai, hangs the ancients, reads, learns martial arts, cultivates, and collects medicines, and derives various art forms that record and express them, creating a colorful landscape culture, and also forming a unique aesthetic thought. Among them, ink landscapes occupy an important position. Over the years, Zhang Tao's favorite thing is the creation of ink landscapes. Adhering to the creative concept of "poetic and picturesque", in the process of creating an ethereal and quiet, flowing and profound artistic conception, the mountains he writes about are tall, vast, handsome, and ethereal, supplemented by the decoration of Gao Shi woodcutters, strange peaks and strange rocks, cliffs and cliffs, waterfalls and springs, ancient caves and ravines, cangsong cypresses, strange flowers, stone bridge ancient roads, thatched house cooking smoke, cattle and sheep mountain fowl, wind and moon clouds, rain, snow and frost fog, illusion and set off a gorgeous and charming natural landscape with original and simple beauty. In his paintings of this kind, the literati landscape tradition of "painting with books" is often reflected, and the injection of calligraphy and brushwork makes the lines simple and solemn, ups and downs, the ink color is dry and vivid, the thickness and lightness are appropriate, the mountain stone writing, the peak shape structure gives birth to vigorous vitality, the ink is scattered and dyed, the smoke clouds are ethereal, and the mountains are steaming, creating a clear and vast and staggered imaginary landscape in the virtual reality. In particular, it is worth mentioning that Zhang Tao, who was born at the foot of Kuntong Mountain and has been nourished and raised by Kundong culture for a long time, regards Kuntong Mountain as an extremely important subject for his landscape painting creation. He once wrote in an article: "I write about the landscape of my hometown with my heart, I write about the smoke and clouds of my hometown with my love; I was born at the foot of the Kuntong Mountain, grew up on the banks of the Jingshui River, obsessively loved, condensed at the end of the bamboo pipe, rooted in the Loess Plateau, infiltrated with the atmosphere of Qinlong culture, conveyed the interest between the outlines and dyes, and felt freehand between the vertical and horizontal splashes of ink." I am willing to use multicolored pursuit to transform the ideal realm. "His dozens of Kuntong Mountain series of group paintings "Conversion Heart", "Kuntong Snow into the Forest", "Suspected Wulingyuan", "Kuntong Yanlan", "Cool World", etc., we can fully regard it as his work of fulfilling his promises. These works are not only his figurative expression of his aesthetic concept of "Taoist nature", but also his deep affection for Kun Gongshan.
Regarding Zhang Tao's achievements in calligraphy and seal engraving, mr. Li Pengxiang, a calligrapher and painter, commented: "He made an in-depth discussion of oracle bone and gold calligraphy, and his works were calmly stretched and rigorous with a pen, which was deeply tasted. The seal carving is also very vivid, the white text is printed with the charm of the Han and Wei generals' seals, and the Zhu wen is printed all the way into the ancient official seal, flexible and clumsy, and the knife is written. Although it is somewhat overshadowed by the momentum and prestige of painting, as Mr. Li Pengxiang said, the height he has reached in the study of calligraphy is still noticed by everyone inside and outside the circle.
Looking at Zhang Tao's fruitful struggle on the road of art, and then looking back at the ink treasure that Mr. Shui Tianzhong gave him that year, on the surface, Mr. Shui praised people, but the implicit combination is the artistic style, connotation and orientation embodied in Zhang Tao's works. By the way, we have to admire Mr. Shui's good eyes!
(Source: Pingliang Daily)