One
In the summer of 2016, the 79th training class of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was held in Beidaihe, I reported to the training site, saw the list of accommodation, and shared the same room with Comrade Guo Feng, a landscape painter, and was happy. This buddy belonged to the tiger and I was the same year old, and we were good friends very early on, drawing sketches together, eating some wine together, meeting together, and having a very good relationship.
I took the key and found the room to open the door, and Guo Feng was boiling water. I thought about it: This old man has just been elected as the new chairman of the Weihai City Artists Association and the president of the Weihai Painting Academy, and I don't know if my temper is strong, so I sent a steaming smile and respectfully said: "Dean Guo, hello." Guo Feng narrowed his eyes and smiled: "Huan Bo, you don't have a fever, do you?" How can it be so angry"?
In the hot summer, meeting in Beidaihe and living in the same room with old friends must be a very pleasant thing! For the next ten days, I couldn't think of unpleasantness.
At night in the room, we learned to enter the mobile phone state like a young man. When friends are around, they will generally use mobile phones to chat with friends thousands of miles away, and when you are with friends thousands of miles away, you will leave your friends around you to continue to chat with friends thousands of miles away, which is the norm in contemporary society, and I naturally have to keep pace with the times.
Who knows turn on the phone, but there is no network. I went out to ask the waiter and was told: there was no Wi-Fi. You're here for meetings, not for the Internet.
At this time, I can only chat with my friends around me.
We've both been painting for half our lives, at least as professional artists. I thought to myself: I have to talk about some art.
But, art, how tall must this be! When I was a teenager, art, in my heart, was the clouds in the sky, and the words composed of these two Chinese characters had an unattainable magnificence, in the current fashionable words, "high cold".
The problem is, Brother Guo Feng, he is not "high cold"! I also wore a pair of glasses and looked at the frame in a human-like manner, as if I was very knowledgeable. And Guo Feng is simple and unpretentious, easy-going, and sincere, and has no boundary with the arrogant personality and shocking people in some biographical literature. Therefore, we can only talk about the sea and the sky, why does art have to be "high and cold"?
The next morning, I was ready to sleep until breakfast time, opened my eyes, there was no Dean Guo on the opposite bed, very confused, this is a very high-standard study class, heavily guarded, where can this brother go in the morning?
When it was almost time to eat, Guo Feng returned, and also took a cardboard of about two square feet, which turned out to be an ink sketch! This is not a general sketch, but a very serious and solid painting, with shape and ink, not just a casual painting of coping style.
It turns out that this brother is using the summer days to get up early and go out to draw sketches!
This surprised me. I pride myself on being a relatively hard worker, and I am also very tight on time, and I never waste time easily. But this time when I came to Beidaihe, I never thought about drawing any sketches! It seems that this Guo Brother, who is also the president of the Weihai Painting Academy and the chairman of the Artists Association, is really not eating dry food!
After the meeting was adjourned in the afternoon, Dean Guo picked up his family and went out to sketch. I couldn't tolerate living in the same room where others were working and idle, and I took the sketchbook with me. On summer evenings, the sun was still very poisonous, and this old man put on the drawing board and practiced, looking attentive, as if the sun did not sun him.
At the end of the study class, on the return plane, I glanced at Brother Guo's simple bag containing sketches from time to time, and thought: This brother has a meeting to sketch two mistakes, which is a full harvest, and I have nothing except a few rocks with a pen on the sketchbook. I have always managed time almost obsessive-compulsively, and the entanglement in my heart is almost entangled into a twist! How can you not be jealous and hateful? I am not a saint.
Two
Compared with our predecessors, our generation's study of tradition is obviously not enough. When we were teenagers, we learned to draw mostly from the beginning of copying comic strip books, and then entered professional art schools with drawings and color paintings. The lack of traditional cultural cultivation is almost like a wound that can never be scabs, and once touched, it is covered with blood.
When we realize this problem, we are close to middle age, so we have to make up for it.
Just at this time, Mr. Long Rui, who had come all the way from Master Huang Binhong and Master Li Keyan, put forward the proposition of Chinese painting that "close to the context and the original source". Guo Feng, who was suffering from traditional hunger and thirst, did not hesitate to pack up and go to Beijing, where he went to Mr. Yu Rui's door and practiced asceticism for three years.
I don't know guo feng's study in Beijing, but just by my understanding of his learning attitude and the experience of Beidaihe, it is easy to deduce what kind of hard work he has done in the Longrui advanced research class.
Once, in his studio, I saw him copying Wang Meng's "Qingbian Hermitage Map", and I fully approached Wang Meng's unhurried, energetic, densely threaded, and vast and deep style, which confirmed that my inference was correct.
Song and Yuan are the peak of Chinese landscape painting, and the learners of landscape painting, who have studied the Song and Yuan families, should be "strong in martial arts", and the remaining problem is to go deep into life, seize the times, and form their own style.
Three
History interprets one era after another, and each era is building new ideas and traditions. The development of Chinese landscape painting is like this era of transmutation.
The ancients said that to "read thousands of books, travel thousands of miles", "travel thousands of miles", for modern people is no longer a problem, we can easily go to places that even Li Bai has not been. When we look at the natural scenery of thousands of years with the same black eyes as the ancients, and silently read the classic landscape masterpieces of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, we will find that we read the classics in the museum and copy famous paintings in the classroom, while the real steps of Chinese culture fall on this mountainous and reckless land, and the characteristics of Chinese culture are always intertwined with people, history and nature.
Therefore, as a modern landscape painter, sketching is an important link that cannot be bypassed in the past.
How many sketches Guo Feng had drawn, I'm afraid he couldn't figure it out himself. Just the sketching experiences we had together, I can't remember how many times.
Once in the Kunming Mountains sketching, we arrived before lunch, friends got together, naturally have to get a little wine to make a grand appearance. Dean Guo said to me, "Huan Bo, we are all not young, not young people." This time, I don't have to fight too hard, and it is also good to come out and relax", I think deeply.
Therefore, after pushing the cup for a while at noon, I went to the hot kang head of the hometown to sleep with confidence, nourished my spirits, and prepared to enter the sketching state tomorrow.
In a very relaxed mood, he slept a lot, woke up and stretched out, walked out of the courtyard, just planned to show a pleasant smile, looked south, stupid: Guo Da Dean was on the reservoir dam against the cold wind of late autumn to concentrate on painting ink sketches.
Fool me to sleep, steal my own hard work, when did this dude become so unkind!
Remembering that Brother Guo had done it once in Beidaihe, he was relieved. Big deal tomorrow at noon to find a painter with a large amount of alcohol to get this old man drunk, let him sleep, I will paint sketches, and make up for it.
Four
As early as the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Li Keyan proposed that the first thing to transform Chinese painting was to "excavate the source that has been blocked for 600 to 700 years." To tap the "source" is to abandon stereotypes and return to nature. After four years of deep thinking, in 1954, Mr. Li Keyan took a tentative step, directly painting the scenery with ink, "establishing a biography for the mountains and rivers of the motherland", opening a new era of Chinese landscape painting and pushing Chinese landscape painting to a temporary new peak that belongs to our times.
In the early 1980s, he graduated from the postgraduate class of landscape painting in the Chinese Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and was taught by Mr. Long Rui, a master of landscape painting, and inherited Mr. Li's concept of landscape painting. And Guo Feng, who has been practicing hard in Longrui Studio for three years, sketching is the source of Guo Feng's study of landscape painting.
There is a song that sings: "The asphalt roads of the city are too hard to step on..." In order to take a deep footprint on his artistic path, he went to nature and to the village of his hometown.
Guo Feng grew up in an ancient mountain village in Zibo, and he wrote affectionately in his sketchbook: "The mountains and rivers of my hometown make me haunt my soul, and everything in my childhood is vividly remembered, like yesterday." He broke the sloppy and fancy style of sketching or photographing instead of ink sketching, but directly forced the excellent tradition of the five generations of Northern Song Masters to explore the mysteries of nature, focus on one place, clear the mind, eliminate distractions, reflect the scenery of his hometown with a sincere heart, and dare not play a little "Yi Pen Grass".
The deep feelings for his hometown and a large number of sketching experiences have bred the representative work "Sunset Talk Cangsang, Late Autumn Mu East Box". On the huge picture, he painted the original authenticity of natural ecology, the ancient charm of the stone house streets, and the simple and generous roads of the mountain townspeople.
The small river at dusk is so comfortable, under the touch of the evening wind, the river ripples countless times, and the small bridge on the river spans the space of the author's heart. Today, most of the young people in the village have gone out to create the world, and the elderly who remain in the village are still watching over their homes and continuing their nostalgia.
I once saw the original of this painting in Guo Feng's studio, and I also went to Ezhuang in Zibo to paint sketches, and I also grew up in a mountain village, which has a deep resonance. From the impetuous city to the lonely countryside, it is engraved with the imprint of childhood, connected with the dreams of youth, carrying the nostalgia of homesickness, and imprinted in the depths of the soul. In that distant adolescence, in that distant mountain village, when the elm money was flying, it was the yellow and willow green, and under the curtain of the open-air movie here, there were many young men and women dodging eyes... More than half a century of ups and downs, decades of ups and downs, how can we forget.
The ancient mountain village itself is an ink painting, and Guo Feng paints its cangsang with ink. Old is actually a kind of beauty, it stores the years, contains the culture, and treasures the history.
Five
Although Guo Feng and I are not from the same division, we have a master, Mr. Li Keyan, and we are the descendants of the Bitter School.
In Mr. Li Keyan's pen, the image of the poet Jia Dao bitterly chanting appears many times. Mr. Li said: "Yu is stupid, not skillful, and the most respected in his life is the dismal management of the sage Du Fu and the spirit of Jia Dao's deliberation and bitterness, because he wrote this to encourage himself." This inscription is a spiritual portrayal of the ascetic school.
"The night is endless, the bitter groan is ghostly", "two sentences for three years, one groan and two tears" Its bleak intentions, how good and bitter!
"Hard practice of basic skills" is a powerful pillar of the "hard school" art system. To "turn skills into instincts", any opportunism is futile and cannot be achieved without long-term consistency. Aristotle told us as early as B.C., "Those things that are repeated every day make us." Then you will find that excellence is not an act, but a habit. ”
In the process of sketching, Guo Feng inherited the spiritual core of the "Bitter School". With his personality, it is impossible to be like Shi Tao, "pick up the bald pen, smile at Jun, dance suddenly, shout, shout a heaven wide, tuan tuan mingyue sky small." Instead, in the face of the scene in front of you, "pure heart and clear heart", sit on the scene for a long time, carefully observe, communicate with the object of the painting, go to dialogue, and then take it straight, neither leaving the characteristics of the object, nor naturalistic depiction, the picture appears to be rigorous and loose, the sky is vast, and the weather is endless. All of this comes from the hard work of weekdays, and there is no other way.
We often hear a saying when we paint: "The more we want to paint well, the worse we can draw, and relaxing and painting is good." This phenomenon may be encountered by everyone, but after all, this kind of contingency is still a low-level mistake, and the real art is "born of constraint and died of freedom."
postscript
Once we were sketching in the Kunming Mountains, the weather in late autumn was already very cold, and at the end of the day, it was cold and tired, and it was inevitable to get some wine for dinner.
Friends get together, naturally have fun, after three rounds of drinking, I stretched my legs and arms to talk about the sea. The painters and brothers of the same generation were too lazy to theorize with me, and the young painters of the younger generation were embarrassed to interrupt me, so the misunderstanding of my "senior respect" who has been a teacher for a lifetime is getting bigger and bigger, and just when I am full of courage to blow my beard and stare, Dean Guo, who is gradually getting better with wine, said: I heard that Huan Bo's writing is good, write something?
I was startled and mostly drunk. As the president of the Weihai Painting Academy and the chairman of the Artists Association, Comrade Guo Feng is the leader of the Weihai art circle, the Jianghu version of the saying is "boss", over the years for the development of Weihai art has done a lot of work, many times praised by the superior, but also in the peers have a high prestige, write articles to comment on him, is this not "committing a crime"?
After waking up, I seriously thought about it, I am not a theoretician, how to write a review article without theoretical support? This kind of article is not well written will scratch the itch of the boots, and it is okay to change the name to anyone. Over the years, we have drawn countless sketches together, held many activities, always have our own feelings and experiences, and it is not a very meaningful thing to record these things?
During the epidemic period, I isolated at home and painted several anti-epidemic propaganda posters, wishing my lovely hometown Weihai an early victory.
Looking out the window at the silent street in a daze, I took my mobile phone and wrote the above text. From 1962 to 2022, Teacher Jia wrote in his 60s: "The biggest enemy is the numbness and inertia that quietly come." "Sixty Koshi is another new", may we sort out our mood, reorganize the mountains and rivers, and continue to climb forward on the road of art.
Writing this, I suddenly remembered: In a recent exhibition conversation, I learned that although Dean Guo was the same age as me, he was a few months younger than me, and I have been shouting "Brother Guo, Brother Guo" for the past twenty years. When the epidemic is over, take a bottle of good wine and go to him, I have to find a make-up!
On the night of April 6, 2022, in Zhonghe Garden, Wenden District, Weihai City (Wang Huanbo, researcher of the Institute of Traditional Art and Culture of Peking University, member of the China Artists Association)
Painter Profile
Guo Feng was born in 1962 in Zibo, Shandong. Member of China Artists Association, Member of the Presidium of Shandong Artists Association, Deputy Director of Landscape Painting Art Committee of Shandong Artists Association, Vice President of Shandong Provincial Academy of Chinese Painting, Founding Director of Shandong Chinese Painting Society, Deputy Director of Shandong Academy of Painting, Vice President of Shandong Zhigong Calligraphy and Painting Institute, Deputy Director of Calligraphy and Painting Art Committee of China Cultural Industry Promotion Association, Middle-aged and Young Writers and Artists of Shandong Provincial Federation of Literature and Art, Chairman of Weihai Artists Association, President of Weihai Chinese Painting Society, Standing Committee Member of Weihai Municipal CPPCC Committee, Weihai Painting Academy Editor-in-chief of the magazine "Art Academy Alliance", assistant teacher of Beijing Fenghuangling Academy calligraphy and painting elite Ban Longrui Studio, secretary general of Beijing Fenghuangling Calligraphy and Painting Creation Institute.