Guan Shanyue in the 1950s
"Look! Added another pier" 1955, 97× 168cm, color on paper Guangdong Guan Shanyue Art Foundation collection
"A Family Letter", 1953, 95×57cm, color on paper Lingnan School Memorial Collection
In 1949, Guan Shanyue and others took a group photo in front of a giant portrait of Mao Zedong.
Jointly sponsored by the Guangzhou Museum of Art and Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum, the "Walking with the People - Commemorating the 110th Anniversary of Guan Shanyue's Birth" is held online from July 1, 2022, and the offline exhibition will be exhibited at the Guan Shanyue Art Museum on the first floor of the Guangzhou Museum of Art from July 30 to September 30, 2022.
The exhibition brings together the works of Guan Shanyue collected by the Guangzhou Museum of Art, Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Guangdong Guan Shanyue Art Foundation, and Lingnan School Memorial Hall, and cooperates with the paintings to display relevant historical documents, with a total of nearly 100 exhibits. This exhibition is created by Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum, and has previously been nominated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the 2020-2021 National Art Museum Excellent Exhibition Project.
Through works and documents, Guan Shanyue's thinking and choices in the period of historical transition are revealed
Guan Shanyue (1912-2000), a native of Yangjiang, Guangdong, was an outstanding contemporary Chinese painter in mainland China and a major representative of the outstanding achievements of the Lingnan School. In 1935, he entered the Spring Sleep Painting Academy and studied painting with Gao Jianfu, one of the founders of the Lingnan School, and was deeply influenced by Gao in artistic thought and artistic practice, and was renamed Guan Shanyue by Gao Jianfu. After liberation, Guan Shanyue successively served as a professor at the South China People's College of Literature and Art, the Central South Academy of Fine Arts, and the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Vice Chairman of China Artists Association, Chairman of Guangdong Branch of Artists Association, Vice President of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, President of Guangdong Academy of Painting, etc.
According to Chen Zhiyun, one of the curators and deputy research librarians of the Guangzhou Art Museum, this year marks the 110th anniversary of Guan Shanyue's birth, and coincides with the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to be held in Beijing, and the Guangzhou Art Museum and the Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum jointly planned this commemorative exhibition. The biggest highlight of this exhibition is to take Guan Shanyue's works and related historical documents from the 1940s to the 1950s as the starting point, showing Guan Shanyue's thinking and choices in the turning point of history, and presenting people with the mental journey of a progressive artist inspired by the Communist Party of China, ideologically supporting the leadership of the party, practicing the party's literary and artistic policy in action, and finally becoming a literary and artistic worker who "serves thousands of working people". She revealed, "On the basis of the original exhibition content, the Guangzhou Art Museum has added Guan Shanyue's works in the collection of the institute, making the content of this commemorative exhibition more rich and comprehensive." ”
Curated with "I and Chinese Painting" as the clue, the exhibition is divided into three parts
Chen Zhiyun introduced that this exhibition takes Guan Shanyue's "I and Chinese Painting" written in 1983 as a clue, leading the audience into Guan Shanyue's artistic and spiritual world. Through three chapters, the curatorial team intuitively and vividly narrates Guan Shanyue's ideological changes in the turning point of history with rich works and documents.
The first chapter is the illustration of the human world. In his self-report, Guan Shanyue said that after the victory of the War of Resistance, "The cities that were ravaged by the Japanese in the past were also in a mess in the hands of the Kuomintang, and the people were still in deep trouble... I am a painter, and I cannot be careless and indifferent to the misery of reality and the disillusionment of illusions. As a result, Guan Shanyue joined the "anti-hunger, civil war, anti-persecution" democracy movement, and used paintbrushes to express deep sympathy for the suffering people. During his time in Hong Kong, he sketched sketches for the common people and created comic strips based on the progressive literature "The Legend of shrimp balls", and submitted works to the first Wen Dynasty Art Exhibition; In order to celebrate the liberation of Guangzhou, he created a giant statue of Mao Zedong with his human painting colleagues, which reflects Guan Shanyue's identification with the people and his yearning for new China. Key works include "Hungry People Under Oppression", "Four or Eight Years of Sketching No. 2", "Hong Kong Sketching and Sewing Clothes", "Hong Kong Sketching Ten", "One of the Qinghai Tar Temple Society".
The second chapter is the new look of the mountains and rivers. Guan Shanyue said in his self-report: "Intellectuals like me who grew up in the old society, just because they never participated in manual labor, have become inseparable from grain and hardworking. In the agrarian reform movement, I have deeply experienced that there are great gains in the struggle for life, and the more contact I have with the toiling masses of workers and peasants, the more common language I have, and only then will I think of what they think, be anxious about what they are anxious about, and may reflect their lives, thoughts, and feelings. Therefore, Guan Shanyue practiced what he preached, conscientiously completed the task of the revolutionary history painting "Liberation of Hainan", and created a series of paintings on the theme of the Long March; In addition to teaching, he also went up to the mountains and the countryside with the students, and went deep into life, such as going to the fishing port of Zhapo to sketch and record the scenes of the hard work of the people with a paintbrush; With great excitement, he also depicted the Hanshui Iron Bridge and the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge under construction, and witnessed the great achievements made in the construction of New China. After ideological transformation, Guan Shanyue's landscape paintings have shown remarkable changes - the magnificent artistic conception has always been full of the spirit of the times and the color of revolutionary heroism, which has also become the tone of his future main art style. His key works include "Attack on Hainan Island", "Long March Road", "Zhapo Fishing Port" (collected by the Art Museum), "Morning in the Countryside", and "Hanshui Iron Bridge".
The third chapter is the image of the people. Guan Shanyue said in his self-statement: "Comrade Mao Zedong encouraged revolutionary writers and artists to transform the subjective world at the same time as transforming the objective world, so I put down my paintbrush for three years, and even temporarily cut off my relationship with art, hoping to devote myself wholeheartedly to the struggle for land reform, in order to seriously transform my old world outlook, including the old art view." I realize that throwing ourselves into the fiery struggle without doing so will be incompatible with the masses of the people and will find it difficult to solve the fundamental orientation problem of literature and art serving the workers, peasants, and soldiers and serving the people. Guan Shanyue responded to the call to paint a portrait of the people and show the new people and new things in New China. During this time, Guan Shanyue participated in land reform, went deep into life, joined the torrent of the times and completed self-transformation. He painted portraits of fishermen, peasant women, aquatic workers, women cadres, naval soldiers and other workers and peasants, which reflected the aesthetics of the times and reflected Guan Shanyue's profound understanding and heartfelt identification with the party's literary and artistic policies. Key works include "A Family Letter", "Women's Commissioner", "Needle Piercing", and "Sewing Clothes".
Chen Zhiyun, deputy research librarian, said that he hoped that the audience could understand through the exhibition how an artist had compassion, and then accept the concept of the Communist Party of China, gradually understand the people's position in history, choose to "walk with the people", strive to "serve the people", and finally become an excellent socialist literary and art worker.
Research and comic strip experience creation activities will be carried out around "Shrimp Ball Biography"
According to Zou Jiejie, director of the Public Education Department of the Guangzhou Art Museum, in order to lead the audience to feel the atmosphere of the times in Guan Shanyue's works, the exhibition carried out a series of activities around the three major education brand projects of "Art Enlightenment", "Lecture Art" and "Travel in Art". The first is "art enlightenment", focusing on "learning". In this exhibition, a summer camp for creative comic strip creation for teenagers will be carried out, and research and comic strip experience creation activities will be carried out around Guan Shanyue's comic strip "Shrimp Ball Biography". The second is "lecturing the art world", focusing on "lecturing". During the exhibition, we will present a special lecture on Guan Shanyue's art, based on the works created by Mr. Guan Shanyue around 1949, and take the changes in Guan Shanyue's artistic creation concepts and political thought around 1949 as clues. The third is "traveling in art", focusing on "traveling". This exhibition will be delivered by Ding Lanxiang, deputy research librarian of Guan Shanyue Art Museum, who will share the curatorial concept of the exhibition, the story and context of the works, and combine the literature to try to put the artist's personal creation in a broader artistic, social and cultural history dimension to explain.
1
"Threading needles" 1954, 39×31 .8cm, color on paper, Shenzhen Guan Shanyue Art Museum collection
Guan Shanyue is not only good at landscape painting, flower and bird painting, but also very successful in figure painting. The protagonist of this demonstration painting of Guan Shanyue's gongbi character sketch "Threading Needles" is Guan Shanyue's daughter Guan Yi, who was not yet 10 years old at the time. In 1954, in the Chinese painting major of the Central and South American College, Guan Shanyue was mainly responsible for teaching physics. During a class, due to the temporary absence of the original model, he called his daughter Guan Yi from home to replace the class model. In order to enable students to draft without relying on pencils and erasers, and to draw directly with a brush, he first took the lead in demonstration and spent about 3 hours in class to complete the work.
In this work, we can not see the stylized figure painting style of ancient painters, whose shape is based on traditional Chinese painting, which properly integrates the understanding of the structure and characteristics of western paintings, and the composition also breaks the form of traditional Chinese portraiture and is presented in busts similar to Western paintings. In addition, Guan Shanyue vividly and artistically shaped the image of her daughter with authentic traditional Chinese brush and ink, rigorous lines and moderate rendering, showing the soft skin of the girl, especially the attentive portrayal of the eyes and the hands that are wearing needles.
2
"Look! Added another pier" 1955, 97× 168cm, color on paper Guangdong Guan Shanyue Art Foundation collection
In September 1955, the construction of the first bridge across the Yangtze River in New China, the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, officially began. Guan Shanyue, who was teaching in Wuhan at the time, had been paying attention to the construction of the bridge, and he also recorded the scenery before the construction of the bridge ("Before the construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge" (1954). At the same time, Guan Shanyue also painted "You See! Another pier was added (1955). In this work, Guan Lao creatively uses the construction scene of the bridge as a long-range view, while the close-up scene depicts a raft in detail, on which the old man smiles and points to the newly built pier, and next to him stands a teenager wearing a red scarf, holding a drawing board and pencil, with a determined look. It can be seen that the construction of the bridge affects the hearts of the people, and everyone cares about the construction of the country and is full of confidence in the future of the country. Unlike other painters who pay attention to depicting construction scenes, Guan Shanyue's treatment pays more attention to observing the people's reactions and expressing the people's emotions.
3
"A Family Letter", 1953, 95×57cm, color on paper Lingnan School Memorial Collection
It depicts a moment when a woman concentrates on reading a letter. Guan Shanyue hides his creative intent in the details of his paintings. The woman in the painting wears the "Membership Badge of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association" on her chest. The Association was the largest nationwide mass organization at that time and did a great deal of work in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. The baby carrier is embroidered with the word "peace", expressing the desire of the woman's heart. The letter I read was a family letter sent back from the Korean battlefield, full of volunteer soldiers' thoughts about their relatives at home. The painter uses the combination of work and writing to express a warm and touching picture, tightly grasps the hot spots of current politics, and implicitly expresses the determination of the Chinese people to protect the land and maintain world peace.
Curator said
Ding Lanxiang, deputy research librarian of Guan Shanyue Art Museum: This time it is Guan Shanyue's "self-curation"
Nandu: Guan Shanyue's creative career is very long, why did he choose around 1949 as the focus of curation this time?
Ding Lanxiang: First of all, this period of Guan Shanyue is easy to ignore by the public, and most people will think that there are not many masterpieces or so-called masterpieces during this period, which seems to be less important. But because last year's time node coincided with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and this year marks the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, it is particularly meaningful to choose to observe Guan Shanyue's creation around 1949, a period of historical transition. As the research continues to deepen and the relevant materials continue to emerge, we are more convinced that the content of this period is particularly rich, and it is also particularly meaningful and important for Guan Shanyue's entire artistic career.
Nandu: What are the characteristics of the works of this period?
Ding Lanxiang: We first noticed the paintings that Guan Shanyue painted in Hong Kong. After taking refuge in Hong Kong, many of his paintings were sent to newspapers for publication because of his livelihood. In this batch of paintings, first of all, the content is mainly concern for the people's livelihood in Hong Kong and the concern for the people, and secondly, in order to be published in the press, his color and brush use will be slightly heavier, a little close to the feeling of printmaking, and may also be influenced by some printmakers of the Human Painting Society at that time, so his sketches during this period are particularly obvious. After the founding of New China, the lines of his works were a little softer. As for most of them, it is because he is mainly engaged in teaching figure painting in Central and South America.
Nandu: What made you think of Guan Shanyue's "I and Chinese Painting" as a curatorial clue?
Ding Lanxiang: The main thing the exhibition wants to tell is an artist, how he chose to walk with the people in the period of historical transition, and this kind of curation must be close to the artist's own thinking and ideas, and we cannot observe and discuss Guan Shanyue according to the perspective of modern people.
In fact, we have prepared a lot of curatorial copywriting, and when the writing of the exhibition outline came to an end, we reread Mr. Guan Shanyue's "I and Chinese Painting" published in the first issue of "Literary and Art Studies" in 1984. We find that this classic artist's self-statement not only contains the chapters narrated in the exhibition, but also complements the real emotions that the exhibition lacks. Therefore, our team decisively abandoned the previous curatorial plan and decided to use Guan Shanyue's article as the basic framework of the exhibition outline to lead the narrative and evoke resonance. In fact, Guan Shanyue became the real curator of this exhibition, and our curatorial team helped him present the "curatorial concept" in a variety of media 38 years after he published "I and Chinese Painting". "Walking with the People" is the weakest "weak curatorial" for us, and it is Guan Shanyue's "self-curation".
Nandu: The exhibition is divided into three chapters, is it also divided according to the content of his articles?
Ding Lanxiang: When this exhibition was exhibited at the Guan Shanyue Art Museum, it was divided into five chapters: "Drawing the World", "Review of the Times", "Chinese people have stood up", "The Image of the People", and "Newly Developed Highway", which were adjusted to three chapters when it was exhibited at the Guangzhou Art Museum this year, in fact, it was mainly divided according to the sequence of time and history, according to the transformation of his creative style.
Nandu: Please briefly introduce the highlights of the exhibition?
Ding Lanxiang: First of all, the exhibition enriches our understanding of Guan Shanyue. Around 1949, it played a foundational role in the artistic ideas and creative methods after Guan Shanyue. In addition to admiring the works, this exhibition can also learn about many historical backgrounds that are closely related to the paintings. This is not like the other flower, bird and landscape paintings we have seen before Guan Shanyue, we may not need to know what year these paintings were painted, but the works in this exhibition have a very strong characteristics of the times. Therefore, it is not only a painting exhibition, but also through the exhibition to understand the era at that time, such as Guangzhou in 1948, Hong Kong in 1949, including the country in the early days of the founding of New China, what was it like? We can all get a lot of information from Guan Shanyue's paintings.
The second is that the curatorial idea is the artist's "self-curation", which is a new attempt at curating, weakening the constructive role of the curator, and pushing the artist's history to the forefront, so that the audience can understand and get close to his ideas.
Nandu: In the eyes of many people, Guan Shanyue is a master of landscape painting and flower and bird painting, but this exhibition exhibits a lot of his figure paintings, why?
Ding Lanxiang: In fact, before 1954, Guan Shanyue mainly painted figure paintings, including the Anti-Japanese War paintings he painted at that time, and he went to the northwest to sketch, including Nanyang, all of which were figure paintings. In the early days of the founding of New China, he also taught figure painting in Central and South American colleges. Later, especially after painting "The Newly Developed Highway" and "So Many Delicate Rivers and Mountains", his focus shifted to landscape painting. It was a matter of staging his art. Later, the public had more expectations and understanding of Guan Shanyue's landscape paintings and plum blossom masterpieces, and may classify Guan Shanyue as a landscape painter or a flower and bird painter, but from the perspective of scholars, I think this is prejudice, or a more one-sided understanding.
Nandu: This year marks the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland, how did Guan Shanyue's early artistic activities in Hong Kong influence his work?
Ding Lanxiang: Guan Shanyue went to Hong Kong in 1949 for a simple reason: he was in Guangzhou to participate in the "anti-hunger, anti-civil war, anti-persecution" campaign, and then received a threatening letter - the letter was painted with a pistol and several bullets, he saw that the momentum was not right, and fled Hong Kong. He defected to the Human Painting Society, led by the Hong Kong Cultural Committee of the Communist Party of China. The accommodation arranged for him by the Human Painting Association was the inner and outer house where Wang Qi lived. At that time, the activities of the Human Painting Society had turned into a low ebb, and many painters began to prepare for the new China, ready to enter the interior to work and create. Guan Shanyue's biggest transformation in Hong Kong is that he has absorbed the progressive artistic ideas of the Human Painting Society; First, he read Mao Zedong's "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" for the first time in Hong Kong. From his self-description, he learned that he felt that his future artistic practice had a clear goal, "suddenly like a fish in the water, like a bird returning to the forest", he immediately pulled his creation back to the road of walking with the people.
What's more, he published two comments in Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao, "Friends, wake up!" and "How Chinese Painting Serves the People", I studied the contents of these two articles in depth and found that many of his ideas came directly from the article "Speech at the Yan'an Literary and Art Forum". Guan Shanyue wrote very few comments, so it is rare to send two articles in a row. At the same time, his creative concept also changed, he worked hard to depict the masses of the people, published some sketches of the lives of Hong Kong civilians in newspapers or cartoons dissatisfied with reality, and used the "national form" of comic strips to create revolutionary themes, such as Huang Guliu's "Shrimp Ball Biography"; After the liberation of Peiping, he responded to the review of the times and submitted 5 works to participate in the art exhibition of the "All-China Congress of Literary and Art Workers". Of course, the most eye-catching thing is that on the occasion of the liberation of Guangzhou, the Human Painting Society collectively painted a huge portrait of Mao Zedong and sent it to Guangzhou to celebrate, and Guan Shanyue not only participated in the painting work, but also escorted the portrait back to Guangzhou on November 1, 1949 with Wang Qi, Yang Sun and others on the first Hong Kong-Kowloon train, showing the world that "the Chinese people have stood up."
Special topic writing/photography: Nandu reporter Zhou Peiwen Intern Rao Yongxin Correspondent Li Kaiyu
The artwork is provided by the Guangzhou Museum of Art
Appreciation of Key Works (Interpretation Expert: Chen Zhiyun, Deputy Research Librarian of Guangzhou Museum of Art)