Hammers:
The story of Dafen Village actually begins with a painting in my childhood memory.
The painting in my memory hangs on the side of the large bed in my bedroom. I slept in the innermost position against the wall, and every time I slept to wake up, the last and first thing I saw was it: a quiet lake glowing green under the moonlight, several fairies bathing in the lake, they scratched their heads and postures, some fell asleep in a small boat, some brushed their hair for their companions, some stared at the reflection in the water... Surrounded by tangled ancient trees, a winding path leads to nowhere, and the atmosphere is mysterious – this is my first impression of oil painting.
Fairies, myths – these are all later explanations, what I care most about is the path in the background of the whole picture, where does it lead? Leading to my childhood dreams? Leading to an infinite future world? Or a dream that leads to another person? I still don't have an answer to that. I just believe that the trail must lead to an unexpected world, where the trails fork, time and space intersect, and the paths that extend from the trails lead to countless worlds—this is my stubborn imagination of the world.
With this imagination, I broke into the artistic kingdom of Dafen Oil Painting Village and the spiritual territory of many artists: there are cobweb-lined urban village paths, each trail may lead to a mysterious dimension...
World Oil Painting Chinese Dafen.
It is not easy not to get lost in the 0.4 square kilometer "labyrinth" of Dafen Village, and it is even more difficult to find a clue for the story of Dafen Village, which was difficult to say in the past and is still emerging today. When we are in the streets of Dafen Village, where the chainsaws hiss and the sound of electric drills are constantly heard, and watch the jagged arrangement of "galleries" and "painting material shops" along the street, almost every road is under construction, and every small shop is decorated with "world famous paintings", we feel more and more confused and helpless.
The architectural lines of Dafen Art Museum are simple and powerful, and it is said to be the largest art museum in Shenzhen. The avant-garde design of the art museum and the dense urban village "handshake building" live next to each other, forming an unintentional "irony". The contrast is as follows: gray cement walls and oil paintings with great color impact, the guise of world famous paintings and promotional advertisements with special prices of 30 yuan... It wasn't until we met Zhang Ke, deputy director of Dafen Art Museum, that we were glad we had a clue!
Creative painting at the entrance of Dafen Art Museum.
"The first village of Chinese oil painting" and "the world's important oil painting trading distribution center"... These names have been chewed up by the media. Zhang Ke gave a set of data: There are more than 1,800 galleries and art institutions in Dafen Village, and 8,000 to 10,000 painters, including artists who have operated galleries for decades, students who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, self-taught painters and beginners. "The oil painting industry in Dafen Village is thanks to one person, the Hong Kong artist Huang Jiang. It was he who brought foreign orders to Dafen in the late 1980s, and with the help of low rents and labor advantages here, he drove an industry. It was as if Huang Jiang was not a merchant, but a mythical figure who brought "tinder" to this land.
scenery
"You can go and see the Huangjiang Oil Painting Art Square." Zhang Ke suggested. We walked around and saw the façade of a building, amazed by its mundane temperament and the wonderful mixture of Baroque style, which was lost in the many buildings of the village in the city.
Stepping into it, you can see a lot of galleries - but from the space of more than ten square meters to tens of square meters, it is more like a small shop. Everywhere you can see jin Shangyi, Leng Jun and other hot oil painters, in the auction market often hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of figure paintings to you squeeze eyebrows and make eyes. They are, of course, replicas, but they are reminiscent: like twins with very different fates, one crowned on the throne, one wandering in the market.
Adu and his landscape paintings.
Walking around, somehow walked into the "Adu Scenery" and met the owner of this shop, Adu. Now that I think about it, it must be the large landscape paintings inside that attracted us. There are forests and lakes painted on it, and there is also a path that leads to nowhere. Of course, there is a more realistic inducement, that is, Adu's enthusiasm, other shopkeepers are either focused on creating or throwing us a cold glance, so that we dare not venture in.
"It's okay to talk, it's better to buy paintings!" We looked at the landscape paintings in the shop before we timidly asked for it, and Adu's answer was undoubtedly the first thing that was dispensable, and the more the second thing, the better. "The environment is terrible!" While listening to the complaints of this middle-aged man from Fuzhou, Jiangxi, you listen to the property personnel in the outside aisles appeasing the next door store that can't make ends meet during the epidemic: "Oh, open source and throttling!" ”
"The environment is changing. House prices and wages have risen sharply, a painting used to sell 300 people, now sell 1,000, foreigners can't stand it. Although you can still aim at the domestic market and take the low-end route, the window left for you is not long, and the wind direction has changed in the blink of an eye. Adu turned his head and said that there are "too many ways out" for us who are highly educated readers. "I don't have the ability to keep my old father from farming, and if Dafen's boat overturns, where can I go..."
Before taking root in Dafen, Adu had gone to the ceramic factory in Dehua, Fujian, and the glasses factory in Henggang, Shenzhen, and did not choose Jingdezhen, Jiangxi (another major ceramic industry center) because it was "very faceless" to work at the doorstep of his home. I imagine a young man who has just graduated from a vocational high school majoring in arts and crafts saying goodbye to his homeland, with the ambition of "never coming back without mixing up his personal appearance", looking around the strange world but losing his soul.
With a stubbornness to delve into research, Adu became the director of the workshop— he proudly said that he was the best of the 5,000 people. In his spare time, he can draw a living apple with a few strokes of a pencil brush, which often attracts the applause of his co-workers.
At that time, the export trade of oil paintings in Dafen Village had already seen a scale. Hearing from his fellow villagers that some people can make money by painting in Dafen Village, Adu had the idea of changing careers. Fortunately, he worked for more than two years and saved 10,000 yuan, and the tuition fee was dropped. He inquired with whom he was the most successful in learning to paint, and some of his fellow villagers were willing to accept him as an apprentice, so he quit his job as soon as he gritted his teeth.
Adu still remembers how difficult it was to change careers to painting in those years, and it was his girlfriend, who later his wife, who gave him spiritual comfort. He studied painting in Bugui, his girlfriend worked in an eyewear factory, and every weekend, rain or wind, the two were reunited at Adu's small rental house. "The hardest time was when I didn't have an income for a whole year. An old colleague from the past called and asked me if I wanted to go back and continue to be the director of the workshop. Once, I really bought a ticket, planned to go back to work, wanted to come and go on the bus, and finally got off the bus at the station in Dafen Village. "Adu is more like boarding a ship of time, and as soon as he anchors in Dafen Village, it is twenty years.
The master-apprentice system played an extremely important role in the early painting tradition of Dafen Village. During the period when he studied painting with his master, Adu came early and left late every day in order to let the master open a "small stove". A fast food is divided into two meals, not to think of bitterness as pleasure. The teacher's diligent example, but the instinct to survive told Adu that there were some things to "reverse" with the teacher: for example, the teacher drew small paintings, and if he drew so well and did not make money, he would paint big paintings himself. The teacher is high, and when he sees that there is no smile on the face, he will put down the shelf. The teacher only draws high-end paintings, and he draws whatever he paints well and sells...
At the most beautiful time, Adu rented a studio on the second floor and took in 11 apprentices. Every day, I went to the second floor to instruct the apprentices to paint, and I felt that I was "like the emperor of the earth". At that time, the business was also easy to do, and the container truck drove into the village all day to get the goods. Since then, the situation has been like flood irrigation, the financial crisis, export contraction, rising business costs, and the new crown epidemic have continuously impacted the Dafen oil painting industry. "A lot of people have changed careers, and I've built a 'moat' for myself and made some money. I crawled out of the pile of dead people! The so-called "moat" may be his diligence, "knowledge of the times", and the customer resources accumulated over the past two decades.
Just as there are both dark corners and bright areas in the composition of the oil painting, Adu also has fear and love. He was afraid that he was still desperate for hundreds of dollars in his 70s, afraid that he would be forced by the environment and eventually have to return to his hometown to farm. "If that were the case, my whole being would be dead, from spirit to body." For Adu, spiritual death precedes physical death, and there is no middle ground in this "death": further widening the sky, taking a step back and never recovering.
The most proud of Adu is undoubtedly his two sons, "The eldest son can be admitted to a very good high school in Shenzhen, better than me." I was like a nail nailed to the wall of Shenzhen, afraid of being blown down by the wind. I don't want my children to come to Shenzhen to work again a few years later. "Adu used a paintbrush to feed the whole family, but every time he returned to his hometown, his parents would ask: Can painting really make money?"
Lines
The artist said that straight lines belong to human beings and curves belong to God. In other words, straight lines can only construct geometric abstract worlds, but curves can create an incredible real universe. In Dafen Village, imperfect but highly individual lines weave the outline of the art museum, the intricate path of the urban village, and also the dream of the artist and the strange shapes on the canvas.
Passing through the Moon Cave Gate of an old house in Lingnan, we broke into Chen Qiuzhi's "Sun Mountain" art space. In this vast space, various elements are fused into one furnace: the exquisite interior design and the ruins of the broken walls preserved in the atrium, calligraphy and painting, guzheng and piano... The eyes are full of calligraphy and ink paintings and sculptures derived from calligraphy, and everywhere is the spiritual atmosphere that comes to the surface.
Chen Qiuzhi introduces his paintings.
We were amazed by the scale and taste of the place, and a lady introduced us to the fact that Mr. Chen was an artist who came out of Anqing and rented this place and spent six years renovating it. "Ordinary people can't do it!" Listening to the tone, this lady should be the manager, and later we learned that she was Mrs. Chen.
Listening to Teacher Chen's introduction, it turned out that he also "did oil painting" in his early years, mainly engaged in high-end decorative painting. When he came to Dafen Village, he saw that the people here were all engaged in oil painting, the homogenization was serious, and the price was extremely low, and he realized that this road was not far away.
Teacher Chen has received a strict calligraphy education since childhood, and wondered if he could take out his housekeeping skills and give full play to it? After a year or two of experimentation, the "feeling" came out. He held exhibitions at the National Museum and asked Fan Di'an, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, to do academic support. "Being recognized by the academic community is on the one hand, someone is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy my paintings, indicating that they have been verified by the market. This is 'spiritual practicality'. "Teacher Chen's paintings are more like the deformation and extension of Chinese character lines, which is not surprising, as a Chinese character as an image has a duality as soon as it is born: it can not only refer to the meaning of things, but also become its own landscape.
As for what is "spiritual practicality", we do not know so. Is it the "cultural consumption" that people talk about today? Or is the spirit returning to some character that has existed since its inception? When we look around this space that permeates the artist's emotions and thinking, it seems that we are infinitely close to the answer.
TNT's famous local paintings.
Leaving the "Sun Mountain", it was getting late. A beam of bright light on the white façade of the "TNT Space for Contemporary Art" looks down on us hungry. We scrambled up the second floor and found that a musical performance was being prepared. The fishing motor at the bar is very distinctive, and the exhibition hall is like other galleries that deal in modern art.
The gallery operator Yang Mingjun is a tough and handsome northeastern man who can match TNT and rock music. He briefly introduced the decoration concept of the space: the fishing boat engine metaphorically depicts Shenzhen as a "small fishing village", and at the same time symbolizes the era of the internal combustion engine, with which contemporary art accompanies it. As for music, art is inherently connected!
"This painting depicts a child from the Middle East, his expression is lonely, he has clockwork on his back, metaphorical war fiddling with humans like a doll..." We are in awe of these works, but we can't help but wander, seizing the gap to keep asking Mr. Yang about his personal experience, he said lightly that he was an art student, had done sales, opened a company, and also experienced a low point in life, and now opened a gallery with friends, even if he is not far from art.
Yang Mingjun introduces his paintings in the gallery.
"This is a world-famous painting in our collection, now worth 12 million!" When we look at a small painting, we are immediately puzzled by the four spiraling lines on it—more like the graffiti of children on the classroom blackboard. "The artist is a World War II veteran who worked as a translator, similar to the Indian Navajo character in the movie The Wind Whisperer. He incorporated cryptographic language into his creations. Yang Mingjun mentioned "cultural added value" several times. Many Dafen village painters copy the works of the master all day long, and the profits earned are only enough to feed themselves, and a veteran interprets the most personal state of life with seemingly rough lines, and even sells for a sky-high price, I don't know if it is the added value of culture that is at work.
a picture painting
That night, I dreamed that I was lost in the labyrinthine paths and deep alleys of Dafen Village. When I was in a trance, those paths and alleys seemed to see my mind, and became a series of living lines, stretching out one picture frame and one oil painting after another. I walked through one painting and walked into another...
The dream is pure nonsense, and Dafen can be reached by car. The next day we visited this unremarkable but absurd village again. We deliberately slowed down our steps, wandering around like two ordinary tourists, hunting for curiosity, until we got to the point of interest. The Art Space is opening two mottled doors to welcome us.
While we waited for the espresso, we looked at the "coffee gallery": the signboard was deliberately rusty, the walls were red bricks exposed, the tables and chairs were cracked, and if there were no paintings on the walls, you would never think that this was a gallery.
In the words of Li Zhiming, one of the gallery's founders, the shop belongs to the "silent wind", that is, the transmission of the rhythm of time with old objects. In fact, this small shop at the corner of the road has been standing quietly for 21 years, and most tourists who pass by here will walk in to see it, just like old objects are rubbed day and night.
Also creative art space.
Galleries share with artists in the mode of substitution, which is not unusual in Dafen Village, and cross-border integration is a "method" to broaden revenue channels. In "Yichuang Art", the tall oil paintings are used to specialize in those who have a certain purchasing power and appreciation, the cultural and creative products are used to mobilize the purchase desire of those who rush by, and various theme salons are used to gather popularity.
These sevens and eight eights add up, and the annual income can reach three or four million. However, Li Zhiming also admitted that the revenue in the past two years has been halved. The impact of the epidemic is only one aspect, Li Zhiming remembers that when he first "joined the company", he could earn 10,000 or 20,000 yuan a month, which would not be high; today he still earns so much, and he feels that he has become poor.
Affected by the great environment, The turnover rate of Dafen's stores is not low, what makes Li Zhiming stick to it? He felt that he was neither an artist nor a patron, presumably an "invisible idea" unless the world no longer needed an artist. "It's more of a trial-and-error place for me, and I can test a lot of my own ideas." Li Zhiming's tone was soothing, but his thoughts were firm.
The art historian Gombrich said: "There is no such thing as art, only artists." But when you come to Dafen Village, I am afraid that you will believe in "art", because it is not only shared by artists, but also exclusive to each artist.
We sipped our cups of coffee and looked through the back door of the gallery to see a self-portrait of Van Gogh shining on the aisle wall outside...
In the laneways, Zhou permanently teaches people to paint.
Zhou Yongyong and his two sons teach people to paint on the aisle facing the back door of "YichuangYi" - this is another scenery of Dafen Village: on a whim, literary and artistic youth want to experience a painting creation, and the children are most interested in certain painting subjects, such as ice piers... In addition to such a "grounded" side, Zhou Yongyong also manages two galleries and a studio.
"Drink tea!" Zhou Yong entertained us in the most Chaoshan way. Van Gogh's self-portraits, sunflowers, starry nights and irises fill the walls of the shop, and the thin, dark man in front of him is full of grassroots, except for the ponytail that hints at his painter identity.
The painter who copied Van Gogh's foothold in Dafen Village came from the Chaoshan countryside and was naughty as a teenager and often fought with people. My father felt that since he did not want to study, it was better to learn some craftsmanship. Zhou Yongyong, who wanted to learn to paint, was taken by his father to meet an old man in the next village (the old man was skilled in "charcoal phase", the skill of painting portraits of dead people in Cantonese culture). The old man saw that he had long hair and was loose and moving, afraid that he would not be able to calm down. Zhou Yongyong grabbed the charcoal pen and brushed it a few times to outline his father's posture of drinking tea. But the people still refused him.
It was not until 1991 that Zhou Yongyong, a friend of his brother's brothers, was taught by a painter from Dafen Village, that he began an indissoluble relationship with Dafen Village and Van Gogh. At that time, the painters of Dafen Village rushed to copy Van Gogh, but they had never seen the original. In 1994, when the flood broke out, many of the street shops in Dafen Village were flooded, the paintings that had been soaked in the water were discarded as garbage, and Zhou yongyong picked up a few paintings and copied them day and night as treasures — many years later, he knew that the original he copied countless times was a foreign painter named Van Gogh.
Zhou Permanent Painter paints.
When opening a gallery in Dafen Village, many people have "unique skills", and Zhou Yongyong is no exception: he paints without a paintbrush but with a painting knife, and the oil paint is deeply stacked on the canvas, showing the sharpness and freedom of the knife worker and the three-dimensional sense of the call.
In 2016, the documentary "Chinese Van Gogh", co-directed by Yu Haibo and Yu Tianqi, premiered at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival (ADFA), and the dafen village painters represented by Zhao Xiaoyong and Zhou Yongyong began to be known to the media and the public.
On this day, Zhou Yong cleaned up the small shop as usual, and a young backpacker kept looking at the works in the shop. After gently asking about the price, I wanted to buy more than a dozen paintings. Zhou Yongyong was half-convinced, wondering why the other party did not bargain? "You buy so much, don't be so expensive, I'll give you the price of the goods." Zhou Yongyong's sincerity also surprised the other party. After chatting, I learned that the other party was a Malaysian overseas Chinese, who saw the documentary "Chinese Van Gogh" when taking the plane, and this time it was a special trip to visit.
Not long after, this overseas Chinese friend invited Zhou Yong to Come to Malaysia to "eat durian", where he received a seven-day hospitality. Friends then asked him to come to a solo exhibition next time— which made Zhou yong even more unbelievable. Zhou Yong was anxious to prepare his works and rushed to Kuala Lumpur as scheduled. Friends introduced him to chambers of commerce, collectors, museum practitioners and local media... Of the 60 paintings that Zhou permanently brought, more than 40 were sold, and "Chinese Van Gogh" became famous overseas for a while.
Today, Zhou Yongyong is much more dashing than when he was younger, teaching his two sons to take care of business. We asked him if he wanted to visit Van Gogh's hometown of Holland, and he said that he dreamed that he would definitely go after the epidemic was over.
End
Li Fengliang, a cultural scholar and secretary of the Party Committee of southern University of Science and Technology, believes that Dafen Oil Painting Village is the epitome of Shenzhen's export-oriented economy in the 1990s and has contributed to the export of Shenzhen's cultural industry. However, with the continuous superposition of factors such as innovation-driven, cross-border integration and technological empowerment, Shenzhen's cultural industry is heading for a "new track". Dafen Village continues to develop inertia, and most painters are still repeating the practices of the past 20 years.
The brush of Dafen Village.
"The advantages of low rent and labor costs in the past no longer exist, coupled with the transfer of the famous painting reproduction industry to the mainland." Dafen Village must recalibrate its positioning and take the road of diversification and internationalization. In Li Fengliang's view, Dafen Village is an art village and town naturally formed through an export-oriented economy, and if it can be guided by the situation, it is expected to become an "international oil painting trading center, a global art innovation highland, a creative paradise for Chinese and foreign makers, and an important cultural scene in the city."
Hanging up Li Fengliang's phone, the question resurfaced: Where did the path in the painting in my childhood memory lead to—a parallel multidimensional space-time? Where does the path in Adu's landscape lead to—the hometown he will never go back to? Where does Chen Qiuzhi's demonic lines lead him—a self-contained universe simulated from Chinese characters? Can Zhou Yong travel through 300,000 Van Gogh works in 30 years – to the wheat fields that Van Gogh trampled on and the air he breathed?
Late at night, I couldn't sleep, I could only pull out my mobile phone and type a few words on WeChat: Adu, I want to buy a painting...
Huangjiang Introduction:
Huangjiang, a native of Sihui, Guangdong Province, grew up in Guangzhou and graduated from Guangzhou No. 6 Middle School in 1966. In the early days, he studied art with Hu Yichuan (former president of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts), and then went to the countryside to the suburbs of Guangzhou (now Huadu) to do zhiqing, responsible for literary and art propaganda work, laying a solid foundation for the later art road, during which he created a large number of outstanding propaganda posters, and has become famous in the local area. In 1970, he moved to Hong Kong, and after hard work, began to engage in the oil painting business and started a class of apprenticeship. In 1980, he chose to return to Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province to open an oil painting studio. In 1983, he went to Fujian to open an oil painting training class. In 1986, Huangjiang came to Shenzhen Huangbeiling to recruit talents to open an oil painting factory. In 1989, Huangjiang moved the factory to the current Dafen, thus bringing the special cultural industry of oil painting into Dafen. The Huangjiang River took the original two dozen painters as its foundation, and at the same time absorbed painters and oil painting enthusiasts from the mainland to settle in Dafen. After that, painters and art lovers from all over the country flocked to Dafen and became the world-famous Dafen Oil Painting Village. Since 1999, the governments of Longgang District and Buji Town have invested heavily in the improvement of the environment and introduced various preferential policies, and Huangjiang has successively established institutions such as "Shenzhen Huangjiang Oil Painting Co., Ltd.", "Huangjiang Oil Painting Art Square" and "Huangjiang Oil Painting Training Center". Huang Jiang is known as the "first person of Dafen oil painting" and the honorary president of Dafen Art Industry Association for life.
Reporter: Wei Ding
Editor: Feng Yan