Text/Yangcheng Evening News reporter Zhu Shaojie Literature and art
Photo / Yangcheng Evening News reporter Wen Yi Li Cungen Intern Yang Rui
Xu Qinsong, born in 1952, is a native of Chenghai, Guangdong. First-class artist, expert of special allowance of the State Council. He once served as vice chairman of the China Artists Association, chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Federation of Literature and Literature, chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Artists Association, and president of the Guangdong Academy of Painting. He is currently a consultant of the China Artists Association, a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the China Academy of Arts, and a researcher of the Institute of Chinese Painting Law of the Forbidden City Research Institute.
Walk into the studio
Life and art are here "zero distance"
After successively stepping down from the guangdong Provincial Art Association, the Academy of Painting, and the Literary Association, Xu Qinsong returned to his original role - painter.
"The studio is the stage for the artist." In Xu Qinsong's view, most of a painter's time and life should be spent in the studio after understanding life and facing nature. "Without ten years of work offstage, there can be no three minutes on stage. A painter who is not in the studio is like a driver who does not drive. ”
In the past few years, Xu Qinsong has enjoyed the treatment of "sleeping until he wakes up naturally" at his home in the foothills of Baiyun Mountain and the shore of Nanhu Lake, while keeping painting for about five hours a day. When he had creative impulses and inspiration, he walked through a door from the living room to the studio. In his own words, it's about making life and art "zero distance."
Xu Qinsong has always emphasized and advocated "art of living, art of life", and many furnishings in the studio bear witness to the taste and experience of this artist. The Chaozhou wood carvings placed in the prominent places are the same as the collections in the Guangdong Provincial Museum; on the bookshelf that falls from the ceiling to the ground, there are books such as the "Grand View of the Fine Works of Chinese Dynasties of Law" printed by the Palace Museum; on the wall there are photos of him and three doctoral students of the China Academy of Art.
Explore the expressive limits of gray ink
In 2022, Xu Qinsong entered the year of the staff country. He said that seventy years of life is an important node, so he carved several idle seals to mark "seventy works", and then reminded himself that he could not stop in art. In this studio, which is located on the first floor of the residence, with a length of 11.5 meters and a height of 4.3 meters, Xu Qinsong continues to create and explore the creation and exploration of the giant production of Chinese landscape painting, constantly bursting with creative inspiration and creating a large number of excellent landscape painting works.
For the Yangcheng Evening News reporter who came to the door, Xu Qinsong recounted how he recently reread the classics of Dong Qichang, Tang Yin and other historical scholars, further pursued the "golden stone into the painting", and also committed to exploring the expression limits of gray ink, full of interest.
On the occasion of celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Xu Qinsong personally led a team to Yan'an to sketch, collect creative materials, and returned to the studio to complete the creation of themes such as "The Former Residence of Chairman Mao of Yangjialing in Yan'an", "The Vegetable Field Planted by Chairman Mao of Yangjialing in Yan'an", and "Looking Up at the Pagoda Mountain in Yan'an", some of which were collected by the Guangdong Museum of Art. It was also in this studio that Xu Qinsong made a sense of the news during the period of staying at home to avoid the epidemic, and completed the landscape painting "The Same Day in the Wind and Moon", which was later collected by the Guangzhou Museum of Art.
Two days before the interview, Xu Qinsong had just completed two large-scale paintings on the theme: "Haiding Boping" for the National Security Day-themed art photography exhibition, and "Di Cao Lou" for the Red Traffic Line in Eastern Guangdong.
Landscape painting giant production towards "seventy works"
Xu Qinsong once said that an artist's studio is like a production workshop, and the space and layout sometimes need to start from the creative needs. This spacious studio is designed for his large paintings. "I draw, draw a few strokes, then step back a few meters to look at it, and then draw again." Keep repeating. Xu Qinsong said that this creative habit gave him a sense of "retreating" life. "Just like who I am now, it is so wonderful to step back to a certain distance to see the world."
Compared with the past, Xu Qinsong now stands and paints for an hour, occasionally thinking of sitting down. In the days when the "lying flat" saying was popular in society, he had a gossip "the foundation of his life", and he said his own thinking in a pun.
Xu Qinsong feels that with strong vitality, there will be strong artistic creativity. Therefore, he now pays more attention to physical health, in addition to maintaining the regularity of life, he also loves to bask in the sun and walk in the small garden outside the painting room, and walks seven or eight thousand steps almost every day.
The small garden is the other side of Xu Qinsongbao's love, planted with plants he collected from all over the world and carefully cared for. Among them, there is a small leaf rosewood that is quite valuable and full of vitality. "The tree has a long growth cycle, and it takes a few years to grow a little. However, trees that grow fast may not become timber, but the slower they grow, the more expensive and more capable they are. Xu Qinsong thus associated with the old Chinese painting art: "Similarly, artists must continue to accumulate and grow, and through the creation and tempering of the years, they can expect to achieve something." ”
In recent years, with the birth of his granddaughter and grandson, Xu Qinsong has felt a strong sense of natural happiness. When the children ran to Grandpa's studio and picked up the brush to draw, there was a children's paradise. Xu Qinsong smiled and said, "The future has come." ”
Ten years ago, Xu Qinsong, who was 60 years old at the time, opened the "Swallowing and Spitting" landscape painting tour exhibition, which lasted for several years through Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Xi'an, Wuhan and other places, going north to south, and traveling endlessly. Today, on the drawing board of his studio, a large piece of rice paper 6 meters wide and 2 meters high is hanging, waiting to be laid for color. This is Xu Qinsong preparing a new work for the next large-scale solo exhibition, and it is also a new piece of paper to be drawn when he enters the seventy years of his life.
Art talk
Yangcheng Evening News: What is the basis for your recent "third nature" theory of painting?
Xu Qinsong: The "third nature" of painting is the result of my creation, exploration and practice of Chinese painting over the years. It is the sum of my many years of experience in the practice of landscape painting.
The so-called "first nature" is the scene of what our eyes see when we look at nature; and our eyes always selectively look at it and transform this seeing into the sight of the mental image, which I call "second nature"; and the viewer can call it "the third nature" every time he looks at every new thing and integrates it into his own feelings and imagination. For a landscape painter, the creation of landscape painting needs to achieve a leap from "first nature" to "third nature" and "third nature".
This is also similar to the Song Dynasty Zen master Qingyuan Xingsi proposed the threefold realm of Zen meditation: at the beginning of Zen meditation, looking at mountains is mountains and seeing water is water; when Zen has enlightenment, looking at mountains is not mountains, seeing water is not water; Zen enlightenment, seeing mountains or mountains, looking at water or water.
Yangcheng Evening News: What are your thoughts on the contemporary development of Chinese painting?
Xu Qinsong: The public function of contemporary landscape painting has changed a lot compared with the realm pursued by the ancients, which is caused by the times and is also the result of the development of things. Today's landscape painting (in fact, including all fine art works) is no longer the state of a small number of people in the past, let alone only staying in the metaphysical spiritual world. It has become a public art system— including many of the cultural venues we have built, to reflect its publicity, that is, to emphasize serving the masses.
Yangcheng Evening News: Is your emphasis on the public function of Chinese landscape painting related to this?
Xu Qinsong: Combined with the current reality, in the state of increasingly rich material world, human spiritual pursuits are becoming more and more exhausted, and the blunt feeling that modern people show in the face of nature is incomparable to any previous era.
Therefore, I believe that in the contemporary development of Chinese painting, we should actively absorb and refine the essence of other art disciplines (such as public art, etc.), so as to enrich our own development and broaden the boundaries. While enriching the artistic language of Chinese painting, let the public participate in the art of Chinese painting, and add the experience of public participation to the development of Chinese painting art.
Therefore, I emphasize the aesthetic process of artistic creation. It's not just that you finish painting, in fact, this only completes half of the aesthetic process. In the contemporary cultural context, artists' works need to be placed in front of the public in order to further radiate the understanding and interpretation of the times, thereby enriching the connotation of their own works. In the final analysis, our art is to serve the people and to play an aesthetic and educational function.
Yangcheng Evening News: The recent conference of culturally strong provinces proposed to promote the project of fine literary and artistic works. In your opinion, what aspects of the current Guangdong art field need to be improved?
Xu Qinsong: The key to cultural prosperity depends on talents, especially the need to constantly forge peaks, increase efforts to promote, attract and cultivate more literary and artistic masters and leading talents with profound achievements and wide influence. Cantonese people have always been low-key, have a relatively peaceful mentality, and do not pay too much attention to publicity. In fact, compared with Beijing and Shanghai, Guangdong's literary and artistic talents are not necessarily inferior in level, but they are far inferior in promotion.
I have visited all parts of Guangdong, and the biggest feeling is that the development of various places is unbalanced, and the same is true for the cause of fine arts and art museums. Guangdong's important art museum venues are basically concentrated in the Pearl River Delta region, and large art museums in other regions are relatively lacking, which requires greater guidance in consciousness.
To build a culturally strong province, Guangdong is inseparable from improving people's aesthetic habits and cultural temperament, and it is necessary to combine art and life. Do not feel that art museums are dispensable things, especially in local decision-makers, the importance attached to the construction, operation and investment of art museums needs to be improved.