"Art China - Focus on Outstanding Contemporary Chinese Artists" - Liu Jianbin

Liu Jianbin, graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Nanjing Normal University in 1988, is currently a member of the China Artists Association, the vice president of the Taizhou Branch of the Zhejiang Huaxia Calligraphy and Painting Society of the China Democratic League, and the vice chairman of the Wenling Artists Association.

His works have participated in many domestic and foreign art exhibitions and won awards:

In October 1991, the "Xizi Cup" National Calligraphy and Painting Competition held in Hangzhou won the Excellence Award, and exchanged views with famous painters Song Zhongyuan, Tong Zhongtao, Lu Kunfeng, Wu Shanming, He Shuifa, etc.

In May 1993, his works were selected for the Third National Sports Art Exhibition, and Samaranch, then President of the International Olympic Committee, also watched the exhibition.

In October 1993, his works were selected for the first national landscape painting exhibition and won the bronze medal.

In December 1994, his works were selected for the 8th National Art Exhibition.

In June 1997, his works participated in the "1997 Third 'Maple Leaf Award' International Ink Exhibition" held in Toronto, Canada, and won the Excellence Award.

In October 1997, his works participated in the "First China Art Exhibition" held in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, and won the Excellence Award. The exhibition also toured European countries.

In May 1999, his works participated in the "Chinese New Era 'Paris Tower Cup' Calligraphy and Painting Competition" held in Paris, France, and won the Excellence Award.

In May 2000, his works participated in the "Australian National Art Museum Collection Exhibition" held in Canberra, Australia, and collected them.

In May 2002, his works were selected for the national art exhibition "Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of Chairman Mao's Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art".

In October 2014, his works were shortlisted for the "Third National Modern Landscape Painting Exhibition"

In August 2015, his works were selected for the Second National Teachers' Art Exhibition.

His works have also been invited by many professional institutions at home and abroad to participate in exhibitions, auctions and employments. He was invited to be interviewed in the people's daily all-media, and the major websites across the country also promoted it.

Interview with Liu Jianbin: Texture is the "symbol" of my works

Zhejiang Online, May 22 (Reporter Jin Zilin Zhao Jing) Liu Jianbin was an art teacher at wenling middle school experimental junior high school, and when the reporter came, he just got out of class and led the reporter to his studio.

Qingquan gargling stones, flowers and trees, and the warm sunshine sprinkling on the entrance, greeted by a fresh and quiet breath, this is Liu Jianbin in the hustle and bustle of the city to create a clean and elegant corner. It is here that Liu Jianbin creates paintings and runs a business life.

Talent is the result of love

Talent is interest. Childhood interests often lead to a lifetime in a career. When he was young, Liu Jianbin loved those colorful colors. He laughed and said: "At that time, other children were playing with mud, playing with slingshots, turning their heads, only I was a maverick, and I loved to scribble around." I painted the walls of my own home, but I also painted them in other people's homes, and anyway, I left my 'masterpieces' everywhere. My parents said that I should have forgotten about it when I turned back, and I didn't change it, so I really didn't get scolded for it. ”

In that special era, the main theme of life was chai rice oil and salt, or around chai rice oil salt. Confucius said: Only after being rich can we teach it, and we can't fill our stomachs, let alone talk about art. Succumbing to a difficult life, Liu Jianbin had to stop at graffiti and bury his enthusiasm for painting deep in his heart...

In 1984, due to the transfer of work, Liu Jianbin left his hometown and came to Nanjing, the "ancient capital of the Six Dynasties".

Opportunities always come inadvertently. By chance, Liu Jianbin set foot in the Nanjing Cultural Center. At that time, an amateur art class was taking classes here, and he stood outside the window and watched, and he couldn't help but show envy and longing. At that time, professor Feng Yiming of the Nanjing Academy of Arts, who later became Liu Jianbin's enlightenment teacher, taught the class.

'Can I learn to draw here?', I didn't expect Teacher Feng to agree. At this point, Liu Jianbin embarked on the road of formally learning art from the original small fights and graffiti.

Teacher Feng specializes in Gongbi character painting, and Liu Jianbin followed the teacher to start learning Gongbi painting, copying, sketching... Step by step, solid foundation. After that, with the advice and encouragement of his teacher, Liu Jianbin began to prepare for the university. Ten years of the Cultural Revolution, Liu Jianbin, who stepped into social work early, experienced a period of cultural blankness, and it was not an easy task for him to pick up textbooks again. Because of the difference in the culture class, Liu Jianbin lost touch with the zhejiang academy of fine arts (now the China Academy of Art) at that time, and was admitted to the fine arts department of Nanjing Normal University and began his university life.

The two years of university study experience, although the time is not long, but let Liu Jianbin gain a lot. Although what is learned in school is the most basic, painting also starts from the most basic sketches, and there is no substantive content. However, the school's teachers' creative philosophy and art theory deeply influenced him, and they were carefully guided by prestigious tutors such as Fan Baowen, Fan Yang, Xu Peicheng and Chen Chuanxi, respectively, so that Liu Jianbin laid a solid foundation.

With a solid theoretical foundation, mature creative concept, and his own unique artistic language, in 1991, Liu Jianbin received the first honor brought to him by fine arts. His "Chess Making Teaching Diagram" won the Excellence Award at the "1991 'Xizi Cup' National Calligraphy and Painting Competition" held in Hangzhou, which was also the first time that his work was recognized by the industry.

After graduation, Liu Jianbin's paintings have been repeatedly exhibited and won many awards. In 1993, his two works, "First Arrival in Phoenix" and "Dragon Boat Racing", were selected for the "Third National Sports Art Exhibition" and the "First National Landscape Painting Exhibition". In particular, it also won the bronze medal at the "First National Landscape Painting Exhibition" and was affirmed by the predecessors in the art world. For example, Lei Zhengmin, former secretary of the party group of the China Artists Association, mentioned Liu Jianbin's "First Arrival in Phoenix" in the concluding article "Ling Across the New Realm" in this exhibition: "... Another noteworthy trend is that many authors are fond of the excavation and play of national folk art. ...... From the color processing to the composition of the picture, there is a lot of novelty. This gave Liu Jianbin great confidence and creative enthusiasm, and it also strengthened his ability to take the brush pole to the end.

Texture is the "symbol" of my work

"A student once said that your works have their own 'labels' and you can tell which one you painted without looking at the name." For the students' evaluation, Liu Jianbin is obviously willing to accept.

Influenced by the academic school, Liu Jianbin in the early days has been imitating the painting style of famous artists, and the style of figure painting is also very realistic. However, Liu Jianbin did not limit himself to this framework. Slowly, he began to add his own artistic language. The original traditional brush expression technique is transformed into a light and hazy style, and in order to strengthen the personality and theme of the characters, some organs are slightly deformed in order to show different types of character characteristics. Then some elements of folk art were added, which also made the shape in Liu Jianbin's works more exaggerated and the style more unique.

"Their life experience accumulated by ordinary times, the subjective judgment of intuition, the rough and simple lines and the exaggerated and deformed 'divine' shape, the 'vulgar' has to make me move." It also made my character shapes in this period more exaggerated, and the lines were more clumsy and rough. ”

The association with "texture" originated from a northwest style.

Looking closely at Liu Jianbin's paintings, it is not difficult for us to find a common point, which has the texture of Liu Jianbin's favorite "secret weapon" ------.

"When I first arrived in Dunhuang, the grandeur of the Dunhuang Grottoes captivated me, and the beautiful colors and exquisite craftsmanship of the murals in the caves moved me, but what really shocked me was the beauty of its very mottled and mysterious texture that had been baptized for thousands of years. Without this point, I think the Dunhuang murals are just a handicraft that records historical Buddhist events. ”

Inspired by this, Liu Jianbin tried to organically combine the clumsy shape of the folk and the color and texture of the Dunhuang murals. The 1991 award-winning "Chess Teaching Chart" was the first "experimental product" of his achievements.

"Chess Making Teachings" is created in the form of narrative. Drawing on exaggerated folk painting-style figures, the natural texture of Dunhuang murals and some elements of ancient rock paintings and bamboo janes, a vivid Go teaching jumped on the paper.

The "First Arrival in Phoenix", "Dragon Boat Racing", "DumbEr Looking at the Shop" and the "Bridge Series" created in recent years are all successful attempts by Liu Jianbin in the process of texture painting.

"I've always felt that creating my own work is not just verbal, and it is more appropriate to express my own things with my own unique art forms and artistic symbols." There is no doubt that texture has become an indispensable artistic symbol in Liu Jianbin's works.

Shallow and deep, live freely

In 2001, Liu Jianbin came to Wenling, Taizhou, a coastal city he later called his "second hometown." He stayed here for 13 years, pursuing the profession he had dreamed of since childhood– teaching. Although he is an under-weighted sub-art, Liu Jianbin still enjoys himself, teaching with his heart and painting at will.

Talking about the creation plan, Liu Jianbin said that he had always wanted to leave something for this "second hometown", so he had the idea of creating the Wenling Shitang series of paintings of "The Passing Homeland".

"Wenling is a place where both property and spiritual civilization are very rich, and the special natural things in Shitang are even more precious." As time goes on, these riches are slowly disappearing, and if I don't paint them again, I'm afraid our descendants will never see them again. ”

From the small doodles of childhood, to the abandonment of the pressure of life, I finally picked up the brush and drew my own life. From the roles of workers, students, artists, and teachers, I am afraid that Liu Jianbin himself did not expect that the "relationship" with painting was so deep.

"My life has been inseparable from painting, I will not let go of anything, it has become an important part of my life, I can't give it up." When it comes to the weight of art in his heart, the firmness in Liu Jianbin's eyes gives us the answer.

Original title: Liu Jianbin Interview: Texture is the "symbol" of my work

Source: Zhejiang Online

Author: Reporter Jin Zilin Zhao Jing

Edit: Jin Zilin

Reasons for me to paint with texture

“...... Another noteworthy trend is that many authors are fond of the excavation and play of national folk art. "First To phoenix" (Liu Jianbin)... From the color processing to the composition of the picture, there is a lot of novelty. (Fine Arts, No. 10, 1993)

Liu Jianbin's work "The First Arrival in Phoenix" uses the strong colors of dunhuang murals and the rough lines of folk paper-cutting, so that the work has a strong formal beauty. Unique in this exhibition. (Jiangxi Daily, 1993.10)

The above two comments were mentioned in one of their respective articles by Lei Zhengmin, former secretary of the party group of the China Artists Association, and Ma Hongdao, then secretary general of the Jiangxi Provincial Artists Association. Although they gave a more accurate evaluation of the artistic characteristics of my work that won the Bronze Medal at the "First National Exhibition of Chinese Landscape Paintings" in 1993, one thing was not mentioned, that is, the use of texture beauty to express the remains of the ancient city of Phoenix, which is the uniqueness of my work in this exhibition. Because I didn't see any painter painting with texture at that time, before creating this work, I did not study the value of texture beauty to works of art, but I liked works of art with amazing texture beauty such as Dunhuang murals. I think in fact, the Dunhuang murals only use the form of paintings to record Buddhist events, of course, there are also many exquisite works. But if there is no mutilated texture beauty formed by thousands of years of transformation, most of these murals are just crafts with historical research value. It is probably because the Dunhuang murals have the texture and beauty of the Tiangong carvings for thousands of years that it has become the reason why Chinese and foreign artists are fascinated by her soul, fascinated and impressed by her "artistic" charm!

I remember that it was still 90 years of the last century, I used Goryeo paper to copy the Dunhuang murals, trying to experience the expression of its texture, but I was always dissatisfied, so I kneaded the painting into a ball in one breath, but I felt that it was a pity to abandon it, so I opened it again, and then the magic appeared, probably due to the rubbing just now, and the picture showed an irregular texture pattern. Later, I tried to copy a few more and further enriched the texture expression method. Soon, the first work I created using texture methods, "Chess Making Teachings", won the "1991 'Xizi Cup' National Calligraphy and Painting Competition" Excellence Award held in Hangzhou that year, (I guessed that Tang Yongli, a Zhejiang American teacher at the time, may have produced the Dunhuang series of works inspired by my painting, but the method was more intelligent than mine.) Because the works he and I won the award at that time did not have the use of texture, as evidenced by the collection of award-winning works at that time).) This strengthened my confidence and determination to express my work with texture. In 1993, two more works were selected for the "Third National Sports Art Exhibition" and the "First National Landscape Painting Exhibition" and won awards. At present, it seems that the trend of creating works of art with texture beauty has entered an era of rising, and both the production method of texture and the level of production have made great progress. I've always wanted to write an article on this, but for various reasons I've put it on hold. Occasionally, in the fourth issue of this year's "Chinese Painters" magazine, I saw an article by Han Yuting entitled "A Brief Analysis of the Reasons for the Texture Expression of Contemporary Chinese Paintings", which aroused my desire to write this article. I would like to share my superficial views on the reasons for the use of texture to express the work.

I thought that Han Yuting had some insight into the issues discussed in this article, but I also felt that the author's understanding of texture seemed to be a little narrow. In fact, the problem of texture has been accompanied by Chinese painting since ancient times, but the expression of vocabulary is different. The lines and inks that Chinese painting pays attention to belong to "brush strokes" and "pen marks", and these brush strokes and brush marks such as "house leakage marks" and "cone painting sand" The dry, wet, thick and light, jerky and moist brush and ink all show the effect of certain textures, and it is this brush stroke and brush mark texture that enriches the expressiveness of Chinese painting art, which makes it have the appeal of art.

The Fifth Dynasty Jing Hao discussed in the "Book of Penmanship" that "the pen has four pads: tendons, flesh, bones, and qi." The pen is absolute and broken, the undulating is the flesh of the real word, the life and death are just the bones, and the undefeated painting is the qi. Although the word "texture" has not yet been used in ancient China, Chinese painting has always attached importance to the expressiveness of line and ink. A line should be "three twists and turns", and a piece of ink should be "ink divided into five colors". Ancient Chinese painters have used their own practice to confirm the texture characteristics of points, lines and surfaces.

"Among the paintings of the husband, ink painting is the highest, the nature of nature, the work of creation" (Tang and Wang Wei's "Landscape Tips") Before this, Chinese painting was attached to "heavy color", and by the beginning of the Tang and Song dynasties, "ink painting" had become synonymous with Chinese painting. Since "ink painting" is "the nature of nature and the work of creation", Chinese painters not only strive to create the visual aesthetic effect of ink painting (that is, to create unlimited changes in the texture of ink painting between simple water and ink, black and white, dry and wet), but also strive to create an artistic realm of "body and trace" in the spiritual aesthetic space. This effort of Chinese painters is not only manifested in their own artistic practice from time to time, but also in the painting theories of successive generations.

Perhaps the most incisive exposition in the theory of painting in the past is the relationship between the natural texture and the Chinese brush and ink, "the one who has obtained the principle of qiankun, the quality of the mountains and rivers." The one who has obtained the law of pen and ink, the ornament of the mountains and rivers is also" (Qing Zhu Ruoji, "Shi Tao Painting Quotations, Shan Chuan Chapter VIII"). The "principle of Qiankun" and "the quality of mountains and rivers" here should undoubtedly be the various surface textures of nature, but the brush and ink method of Chinese painting is derived from the "ornaments of mountains and rivers" of these natural textures. "The principle of painting and the method of brushwork are not the quality and ornament of heaven and earth" (ibid.) When Chinese painters depict the natural textures of these "qualities and ornaments of heaven and earth", they gradually summarized their modeling laws and made analogies and generalizations to these natural textures. For example, the various methods of landscape painting, the eighteen depictions in figure painting, etc., will not be described here.

The Chinese painting technique described above is "not invented by the ancients and played with pen and ink", it is actually "seeking the law according to the form.". It can be said that the conceptual texture of Chinese painting uses analogous techniques to express nature in a stylized form, on the one hand, this conceptualization, stylization, analogy and imagery techniques are becoming more and more mature, so that when the "Four Kings" of the Qing Dynasty developed, it has deviated from the original "principle of Qiankun" and "the quality of mountains and rivers", and has become a purely skillful stroke game; On the other hand, this stylized technique restricts the expressiveness of Chinese painting, making it narrower and narrower, and can only find a way in traditional subjects. So how can this be solved? Only by making new attempts in forms of expression, production techniques and tools and materials can new themes and new artistic conceptions appear. In fact, the ancients have long realized this, Song Shenkuo recorded a passage of Song Di's painting theory in the "Mengxi Pen Talk": when painting, "first seek a defeated wall, Zhang Silk Suyi leans on the defeated wall, look at it day and night, both after a long time, see the high flat and twists on the wall of defeat, all become the image of the landscape, the mind thinks, the high is the mountain, the lower one is the water, the kan is the valley, the lacking one is the stream... Then the pen is randomly ordered, silently God will be natural, the scenery is heavenly, not similar to people, it is said to be a living pen. The mottled and broken walls have stimulated the painter's divine thoughts, so that the painter "thinks with his mind" in this natural texture out of the nature of the "divine meeting" of the "divine meeting" of the "scenery is the sky", which is not a real mountain and water, and there is no need to use the traditional, procedural method to express, just "random life pen", but seek "living pen" and "not artificial". And the king of the Tang Dynasty, in order to seek the texture of ink and dyeing that "cannot be reached by the brush and ink of the history of painting", "poured ink on the mountain, because it resembles its image, or it is a stone, or a forest, or a spring, natural and natural, and it is created" (Xuanhe Pictorial Spectrum).

It can be seen that since the Tang Dynasty, Chinese painters have never given up the exploration of new situations, new techniques and new artistic conceptions. Traditional stylized pen and ink techniques have also been challenged in various ways, and the Qing Dynasty painter Gao Qipei has carried out a complete revolution in the traditional tool form, creating finger painting, that is, using fingers and palms as tools to dip color ink for creation. Although these attempts were "unorthodox" at the time (including Wang Qia's method of splashing ink and blowing clouds and blowing snow), have not they all become our tradition today? I would like to ask: If it were not for the bold exploration of these "arrogant people" at that time, would there be such a gorgeous and rich and unique Chinese art today? But what is emphasized here is that the ancients' expositions on "texture" are actually subjective textures, which are essentially different from objective natural textures. That is to say, the painter uses the pen to "make" these textures, which are all textures that have been subjective by the painters, and it plays the role of being able to reproduce natural objects artistically and imagely, so as to make their works rich in artistic appeal.

With the continuous development of society, people's aesthetic needs are also constantly changing. We should keep pace with the times, learn from Gao Qipei and other predecessors who insist on breaking the traditional concept that "the pen is the only painting tool", on the basis of leaving the basic elements of Chinese painting, be good at absorbing the beneficial ingredients of foreign art and other kinds of painting, and boldly try to use various materials, tools and techniques to enrich and improve the artistic expression of chinese painting, an artistic treasure of the mainland. Let her exude a stronger artistic charm and new artistic conception.

I would like to conclude with a passage from the Russian art historian Panofsky: "When we revel in the weather-eroded statues in chartres church, we cannot help but regard the mottled patina and skillful shaping of these statues as equally aesthetic value." But this value has nothing to do with objective or artistic value. The former implicitly hints at the sensual pleasure caused by the special effects of light and color and the emotions of 'antique' and 'fluttering', while the latter is only the creative intention of the creator of the statue, for the Gothic stone carvers, the damage caused by age is not only inappropriate, but also irritating - they have colored the statue in order to protect it. But if they are really well preserved, our aesthetic pleasure may be seriously damaged. "I love creating with texture!