Ye Qianyu is one of the masters filmed in the art section of the second season of "One Hundred Years of Masters".
Ye Qianyu (1907-1995) was the founder of Chinese comics and life sketches. Not only is he a famous cartoonist, his sketches are unparalleled in the art world, but he is also a master of dance character painting. He has illustrated books such as Mao Dun's novel "Midnight" and Lao She's script "Tea House". As a famous professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he trained a large number of talents, and Fan Zeng was one of his disciples.
Ye Qianyu is a master of Chinese painting in the 20th century, especially the freehand figure painting art he created after the founding of the People's Republic of China, which is a strange flower in the modern and contemporary Chinese painting world, and the image of ethnic minority figures he created has added a little bit of humanity and brilliance to chinese galleries in the 20th century. At the same time, Ye Qianyu's freehand figure painting art also has important theoretical value: he cleverly bypassed various political ideological repression and obstruction in the new Chinese period, and after experiencing exploration, he chose a way out of ethnic minority opera and dance character themes to open up the development of traditional painting, and it is also under the cover of this subject matter transformation that he escaped from the public perspective and macro narrative under the domination of mainstream ideology, returned to the personalized perspective, rediscovered sensibility, and extended tradition. And is committed to the reconstruction of the form of expression.
It can be said that in the first 30 years of New China, Ye Qianyu's art to some extent constituted a certain degree of reversal of the political ideology of repression and domination of sensibility, or the breakthrough of sensibility to reason, thus opening up a new realm for the development of traditional Chinese painting and showing a direction, which is still worthy of our review and reflection today.
Ye Qianyu Inner Mongolia Grassland Bowl Dance 69cm× 45.5cm 1980
First, the trend of the times
Before the founding of new China, Ye Qianyu was known to the Chinese people for his comic art creation, and his "Mr. Wang" became famous on the beach. Comics is a new kind of painting produced by the expansion of the function of political criticism due to the theme of the era of Chinese social salvation and enlightenment in the early 20th century, and many character painters in this period have engaged in the creation of anti-war propaganda paintings or world-style comics, which was the social mission of character painters at that time.
After entering the new Chinese period, the contradiction between the enemy and ourselves ended, and in the field of ideology and culture, the combat function of literature and art was also declared over, and it was replaced by narrative and praise, which was really a dramatic turn, which was a great challenge for many artists, especially those who already had certain artistic achievements in the field of satirical literature and comic creation. In the new Chinese period, comics became a forbidden area, and many cartoonists mostly turned to other related paintings, such as prints, comic strips, propaganda paintings, or engaged in illustration design, some stopped creating, and some turned to the field of Chinese painting. Ye Qianyu's artistic path has experienced exploration and twists and turns.
Ye Qianyu Commented on the stage image of the play 90cm×47cm, 1979
At the beginning of the founding of New China, the national cultural institutions organized some such as the "New Year Painting" movement and other large-scale theme painting creation activities, and like many figure painters, Ye Qianyu also painted some Chinese paintings that expressed the new social appearance of the times, and several large-scale thematic paintings he created during this period expressed the mainstream ideology, with strong political propaganda colors, such as "The Liberation of Peiping", "Chairman Mao is with the People of All Nationalities" and so on.
The painting style of this period emphasizes that art has become an ideological propaganda material in terms of theme, and the works focus on ideology and politics, with the expression of the revolutionary achievements of the Communist Party and the scene of socialist construction as the main theme of the times, and the popular "public overview" model of a thousand people. At the technical level, the "Xu Jiang system" transformation route advocated by the academic school has become the dominant, the path of Western painting modeling plus Chinese brush and ink has become the way, the personalized conception and pen and ink have been suppressed and lost, and the formal beauty has been ignored. Most of Ye Qianyu's works are gongbi figure paintings, with fine lines and rigorous shapes, and like many other artists, the grand narrative under the public vision makes the sense of individuality closed, and the personality is drowned in the trend of the times.
Ye Qianyu Xia Heshi 46.9cm×34.6cm 1977
Second, the turn of the material
Ye Qianyu, who is rich in artistic creation, is not satisfied with this kind of going with the flow, and he quickly abandons this path, because this is not only a harm to the art of Chinese painting, but also a stifle of the artist's personality and creativity, or a denial of the essence of artistic creation and aesthetic sensibility, and the real artist is to break through this barrier. In the 1960s, Ye Qianyu once again turned to ethnic minority themes. In the 1940s during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a large number of artists went deep into the rear area of the southwest of the motherland, where it was easier to contact the ethnic minorities in the Yunnan-Guichuan area, so artists such as Pang Xuanxuan, Ye Qianyu, guan Shanyue and other artists went deep into the ethnic minority areas to sketch and collect styles, and there was a trend of depicting ethnic minority themes.
After the founding of New China, Ye Qianyu reversed the heavy color painting style of the 1940s and re-explored this theme with large brushstroke brush and ink, which produced a freehand figure painting of ethnic minority themes that truly represented his achievements in art, and it was this type of creation that reached Ye Qianyu's highest artistic standard and achieved his position in the history of new Chinese art.
Leaf Qianyu Xia He suit 135cm×69cm, 1963
Ye Qianyu's theme transformation angle had its practical basis in the social context at that time. Because the creation of figure paintings at that time was forced by the requirements of ideological themes, most of the figure painters were painting themes that expressed revolutionary history or realistic socialist construction scenes, or showed the brilliant image of the leader who was far-sighted and the arduous revolutionary years, or showed the construction of industry and agriculture and the construction of culture and science and technology, all of which were closely related to politics, because such themes were easy to express clear themes of praise.
Later, in this direction of exploration, another force was differentiated, and a large number of figure painters such as Li Hu and Huang Ji began to turn to expressing the lives of ethnic minorities in remote areas outside the center of civilization, and they went to the frontier to carry out sketching, and the theme of political ideology ran through the geographical area outside the center of civilization, showing the class struggle of ethnic minorities, border construction, national unity, reunification of the motherland and other grand themes, which is an extension of the mainstream ideological theme in the geographical area.
Ye Qianyu Liangshan Dance Steps 68.7cm× 45.3cm, 1963
In this direction, there continue to be different differentiations in the artistic creation groups, because the political changes and cultural changes of the times are not too strong among ethnic minorities, and their lives retain a strong national ancient style, with regional and cultural characteristics, and the political color is far weaker than the cultural color. In this way, some painters have gradually shifted the focus of their expression from the revolution and construction of ethnic minorities to cultural customs and national customs, and Huang Ji is the main representative of this path. Although Huang Yin has also painted some works on ethnic minority themes with political themes, on the whole, Huang Yin's theme focus has actually shifted from politics to culture, achieving the first breakthrough of mainstream discourse.
Leaf Shallow Yu Indian Brahmana 97cm×57cm 1962
Ye Qianyu's excavation of the theme of ethnic minority themes has taken another step forward, and he has shifted from the display of folk customs to a more personalized perceptual aesthetic level. Ye Qianyu's depiction of the life of ethnic minorities is neither a political struggle nor socialist construction, and at the same time, his ethnic minority theme figure paintings are not simply style presentations, neither cultural narratives nor plot descriptions, but ordinary ethnic minority daily lives.
Most ethnic minorities can sing and dance, and their lives are rich and colorful, so that song and dance have become the focus of Ye Qianyu's materials. In this type of work, Ye Qianyu is not to express the ideological themes required by the politics of the times, but the simple emotions in the daily life of ethnic minorities, especially the national character of ethnic minorities who are hospitable, love life, pure and cheerful, and simple and simple, through which they present aesthetics and enlighten humanity.
This not only meets the political requirements of praising the new look of the new society, but also complements the gap in the theme of the central area of civilization, and also enters the safe zone in terms of materials. Under this so-called praise title, Ye Qianyu's artistic theme expression is more euphemistic and subtle, greatly diluting the political color, or even quietly walking out of the theme and turning to the pure perceptual expression of art for art's sake.
Ye Qianyu Great Unity of the Chinese Nation 140cm× 280cm, 1951
This is Ye Qianyu's artistic path, he used the theme of transformation with ethnic minorities to carry out more bold artistic innovation, trying to fade out of the grand theme in that era, return to personalized perspective, and art for art's sake. He focuses on the exploration of pure aesthetic perceptual forms, borrows ethnic minority themes to explore the extension path of traditional Chinese painting expression, and expresses the new sensibility of individualization. Here, Ye Qianyu's art quietly stepped out of the subject area, turned to the exploration of perceptual forms, and liberated aesthetics and sensibility with the help of ethnic minority themes, and also opened up a wise way of life for the development of Chinese freehand figure painting.
This path makes Ye Qianyu's art skillfully fade out of the theme, becoming a rare light music of that era, although there is no grand idea, but the simple and simple life and innocent humanity he depicts touch the depths of people's hearts, haunting the heart, lingering, more deep and subtle. This is how precious and somber this is when everyone is in the whirlpool of various movements and struggles, and how precious and deeply comforting it is for the civilization center that has exterminated family affection and friendship due to political struggle, Ye Qianyu used this aesthetic and sensibility to touch people's reverie and desire for truth, goodness and beauty, and he composed a hymn of human nature. In this era of aesthetic poverty, like the prose of Bingxin in the Republic of China period, Ye Qianyu took aesthetics as the form as the purpose and all that was owned, which was indeed unique in the painting world at that time.
Third, the exploration of form
It is precisely because of this basic artistic positioning that Ye Qianyu's creation can be freed from the entanglement of the theme, and he uses all his creations to "art for art's sake", so that he can break through all kinds of shackles and shackles, explore the problem of perceptual formal expression, and save the Chinese freehand figure painting in the ten-sided ambush, thus opening up a new realm.
Ye Qianyu Dance of the Tibetan Plateau 133cm×66.4cm, 1960
Traditional figure painting in modern times has shifted to the expression of contemporary real figures, Chinese costumes into modern and contemporary are based on short clothes, and in the first 30 years of New China, a pure blue and gray tone was popular, so that the long lines and colors of traditional Chinese paintings have no place to play. In order to solve this contradiction, many figure painters borrowed the chiaroscuro and light and shadow expression methods of Western painting, gave up the traditional lines and colors, and lost the face of traditional Chinese painting and cut off the connection with tradition, which was the path that had to be done at the technical level in the early stage of exploration.
However, the theme of ethnic minority figures just makes up for this lack, because their costumes are still dominated by robes and large sleeves, and the colors are bright and diverse, which finds a reasonable space for the extension of traditional Chinese figure painting techniques, and in Ye Qianyu's figure paintings, lines and ink have gained legal existence. This is very different from the mainstream of figure painting creation at that time, the painters who borrowed the elements of Western painting to transform figure painting were exploring the path of pen and ink plus sketching, most of the methods used were to dissolve the pen and ink and lines, Ye Qianyu continued to retain the long line modeling method, not only that, he also further strengthened the expressive function of traditional techniques, and made a bold exploration of ink painting.
Ye Qianyu further strengthens the freehand quality and lyrical color of the lines, highlighting their expression function. His lines are spicy and unrestrained, more rich and changeable, forming a contrast of length, thickness and straightness, paying attention to the change between ink colors, paying attention to maintaining the spacing and rhythm of line and ink, so that it is interspersed and combined, and reflects each other. In addition, because contemporary freehand figure paintings should maintain line shapes, there will be a lack of sense of body and thickness when used for a large scale, and if only line shapes are relied on, the image will be lost to monotony and weakness. For this, Ye Qianyu did not mechanically copy the light and shade to strengthen the body feeling, but used a variety of colors through the plane, retained a large tiled ink block to fill the background, and used the color of baking and dyeing and ink blocks to increase the volume and thickness of the characters.
He also used the pattern depiction of the character's costume to increase the sense of somatosensory. This expression is still flat, but the character image has both weight and is not too heavy, so that there is not much contrast between the character image and the blank background. All these means are transformatively created using the traditional vocabulary of Chinese painting, retaining the technique of "writing shapes" of Chinese painting and the elements and taste of ink painting.
Ye Qianyu Liangshan Dance Steps 131cm×70cm 1962
Ye Qianyu did not blindly reject Western painting, but boldly absorbed and digested it, and he used the traditional Chinese artistic spirit to integrate and transform it. Ye Qianyu solved the problem of accurate proportions of human shapes on the basis of drawing on Western paintings, which is his transcendence of tradition. He is also good at capturing the human body in motion, and in this regard, Ye Qianyu is indeed thanks to his training in Western sketching techniques, he insists on sketching, studying the structure of the human body, and grasping the human body in motion. However, these borrowings did not make Ye Qianyu lose his roots, but still followed the basic spirit of Chinese painting art.
In terms of composition, he strived to avoid the popular panoramic modeling mode at that time, grasped the basic spirit of "conveying the spirit of the gods", did not do photo-style description, grasped the key points that could express the spirit of the characters, boldly cut, and washed the image. The rest pay attention to trade-offs, the background is all blank, pay attention to capture the overall charm of the characters, so the spirit is present, full of movement, and the atmosphere is vivid. Because Ye Qianyu depicts characters in dance and opera performances, he weakens the performance of the character's face, and his performance of the character's face avoids the heavy and light, lightly touches the light, slightly applies light and shadow, strengthens the capture of body language, and infuses the basic spirit of traditional Chinese painting "taking the god from the relic", thus avoiding the heaviness of Western painting and paying attention to the overall effect of the picture.
Leaf Qianyu White Snake Legend 91cm×66cm 1960
Therefore, on the road of borrowing from Western painting, Ye Qianyu did not copy the chiaroscuro expression method, not to replace Chinese painting with Western painting as the main one, but to dilute the relationship between light and shade in the expression of ink painting, so that the Chinese pen and ink expression and the sketch of Western painting were organically combined. With the traditional appearance as the main tone and appropriate reference to the West, Ye Qianyu's figure painting art not only retains the traditional appearance in the form of brush and ink, but also directly inherits the tradition in the spirit of art. From here, it can be seen that Ye Qianyu has carried out a creative transformation of tradition, and he has recombined and appropriately consulted the sketch modeling and somatosensory expression of Western paintings by relying on the resources that can be excavated in the Chinese tradition, but instead of mechanically copying, he has carried out creative construction in the spirit of tradition.
However, Ye Qianyu's exploration in the 30 years before the founding of New China still could not escape the sensitive sense of smell of the political eagle dog, and could not escape the fate of being suppressed, and he even went to prison for a time, and his aesthetic figure painting art could not be seen in this era with politics as the theme of the era. Only after the Cultural Revolution did society dare to accept Ye Qianyu's figure painting art, in the context of the return of tradition, people really discovered the valuable points of his figure painting for the innovation and inheritance of tradition, and understood its value, Ye Qianyu's artistic reform route is a path of innovation in inheritance.
And after the figure painting in the new period has stepped out of the subjectivity, the entire art world has begun to get out of the shackles of the theme and transform to the pursuit of formal beauty, and only then has there been a large-scale shift to ethnic minorities. In the period of social transformation in the 1980s, the theme of ethnic minorities once again became the mainstream of figure painting creation, and the minority character paintings of Huang Ji and Ye Qianyu became popular again, and were hung in the Great Hall of the People and other important institutions, including oil paintings, printmakings and all other paintings, which formed a boom in the expression of ethnic minority life, and ethnic minority themes became the mainstream art that broke through and replaced political slogans and red light images, constituting the main force of the era's aesthetic and perceptual liberation of political ideology and rational constraints.
In fact, the exploration of ethnic minority themes and formal beauty is actually Ye Qianyu's artistic practice as early as the 1960s, and the basic method of freehand figure painting he explored has become the basic norm of freehand figure painting in the new period, so Ye Qianyu is one of the few traditional inheritors and pioneers in that era, especially his principles and basic spirit of traditional, Western and contemporary methods, which have become the direction of exploration of freehand figure painting in the new era. It also brings a lot of inspiration to the innovative development of our traditional art today.
Source | Excerpted from the May 2014 issue of Calligraphy and Painting World Magazine
Declare | The copyright of the article and the picture belongs to the original author, the source has been indicated in this public account, if there is any infringement, please contact us, that is, to deal with it.
Producer | Hou Xuan
Art Editing | Magical conch
Chen Yinke's triple tragedy: the most important thing is that the literati are not free
▲▲"A Hundred Years of Great Masters" was selected as a key documentary celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party
Mr. Ye Jiaying, a 97-year-old expert in classical poetry, wrote an inscription for "A Hundred Years of Great Masters"
About us
The large-scale cultural project "Centennial Masters" is China's first large-scale series of biographical documentaries focusing on the masters and masters who made outstanding contributions to Chinese civilization in the 20th century, and is jointly produced by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Central Radio and Television Corporation, the China Academy of Arts, the Central New Film Group, the China Literature and Art Foundation, and the Centennial Masters (Beijing) Cultural Communication Co., Ltd.
"Centennial Masters" is the "Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture Inheritance and Development Project" of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, the General Office of the State Council and the Central Propaganda Department, which has been selected for two consecutive years as the "Record China" communication project of the Propaganda Department (Information Office of the State Council), the key topic planning project of the "14th Five-Year Plan" documentary of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the key documentary celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party, the "Recording the New Era" documentary boutique project and the key documentary project (2018), and the major theme main line publicity and key topic selection project of CCTV. It is also funded by the National Arts Fund, the China Literature and Art Foundation, the China Art and Culture Foundation, the Beijing Municipal Government Cultural Innovation and Development Fund, the Beijing Culture and Art Fund, the Beijing Radio and Television Network Audiovisual Development Fund, and the Beijing Xicheng District Cultural and Art Creation Support Special Fund. It has won 12 documentary awards.
From 2013 to 2017, the filming of 43 masters in the first season of "100 Years of Masters" has been completed, which is divided into art, calligraphy, Peking Opera, drama, music and literature. The filming of 57 masters in the second season of "100 Years of Masters" has been launched in 2018, adding science and technology, education, traditional Chinese studies, architecture, traditional Chinese medicine, opera, and film, which are planned to be completed one after another, and will be presented with the "100 Years, 100 People, 100 Episodes" documentary, "100 Masters Special Exhibition" and "100 Books Publishing".
The completed documentary "100 Years of Masters" has been broadcast on CCTV (one set, three sets, four sets, nine sets, ten sets, fifteen sets, discovery channels, international channels), China Education Television, provincial satellite television, overseas television stations and other 157 tv stations at home and abroad, which have been widely praised and have repeatedly set new high ratings for similar documentaries. "100 Years of Masters (International Edition)" is broadcast worldwide in 8 languages.
CCTV Market Research Co., Ltd. (CTR) in July 2020 According to the statistical results of CSM National Measuring Instrument, "Centennial Masters" reached a total of 10.2 billion people.
The series of books "100 Years of Masters" has been distributed to nearly 1,000 colleges and universities across the country for three consecutive years by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the Ministry of Finance as a "High Art entering the campus" study book.
"Centennial Masters" has become one of the most high-end phenomenon-level brands in the field of culture, and with its unique advantages, it has built an important platform for disseminating China's excellent traditional culture, interpreting and displaying cultural self-confidence, and practicing the core values of socialism.