◎ Wang Jia
Exhibition: A Hundred Years of Wuji - Exhibition of Works of Western Modern and Contemporary Art Masters
Exhibition Period: July 23rd - October 30th, 2022
Venue: China Millennium Monument
The "100-Year Wuji - Exhibition of Western Modern and Contemporary Art Masters" (hereinafter referred to as the "100-Year Wuji Exhibition"), which is currently being exhibited at the China Millennium Monument, has undoubtedly become a beautiful landscape for art lovers in Beijing. The exhibition borrows 62 works by 46 masters from the late 19th and 20th centuries from the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Italy. It includes traditional themes such as portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as more abstract and modern works and installations. The exhibition takes the word "Wuji" from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching as the title, intending to reflect the blossoming of European painting art at the turn of the last century and the emergence of sects. However, although these different styles that have sprung up like mushrooms have no boundaries at a glance, if you carefully examine the "ahead" and "evolution" of many works, there are traces of hidden laws to follow, seemingly "wuji", but in fact "there is a law".
In the exhibition, the most watched masterpieces are basically portraits. These include The Gardener, painted a year before the death of Vincent van Gogh, "The Marquise of Roosevelt Luce" by Giovanni Bordini, the "Belle Époque" portrait, the "Portrait of Hanka Zabrovka" by Amedeo Modigliani for the wife of his patron and agent Zabrovka, and the Self-Portrait of Giorgio de Chirico's attempt at retro tempera painting.
These four portraits, created less than 30 years apart, almost summarize the diversified transformation trend of Western portraiture at the turn of the century from traditional to modern, from retrospective to innovative, from three-dimensional to two-dimensional plane.
Van Gogh: The Gardener
If we talk about the most eye-catching exhibit of the "Centennial Infinity Exhibition", Van Gogh's "Gardener" is undoubtedly lonely and defeated. Due to the short life of the painter himself full of stories and the high market value of his works, this work has earned enough attention since the release of the exhibition trailer. The author was fortunate to be invited to observe the grand "unboxing" ceremony of the painting up close, and for the first time admired this bust portrait that exudes a refreshing mood.
The work is now widely regarded by the academic community as van Gogh's creation in mid-September 1889 during the Saint-Rémy period, when he was being treated at the São Paulo de Mausor Psychiatric Hospital, writing in a letter to his brother Theo: "I am now very eager to create portraits. "From the emotional state and bright and bright colors of the people in the Gardener painting, it is difficult to imagine that the painter completed this portrait in a state of severe mental illness and limited personal freedom. From this work, Van Gogh not only returned to the François Miller-style theme of peasant life, but also injected portraits with more elements of the non-Western tradition.
It is no secret that Van Gogh loved Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and on the basis of his extensive collection of ukiyo-e art, he also integrated the graphic drawing techniques of such arts and crafts into his personal artistic creation. Many elements of the painter's influence on ukiyo-e are reflected in The Gardener.
First, Van Gogh outlined the shoulders, neckline and hat lines of the peasants' shoulders, necklines and hats in his most iconic rugged brushstrokes, and embellished his clothing patterns and pleats in highly saturated reds, greens and blues. This move directly changes the portrait from the traditional three-dimensional three-dimensional in the West to a two-dimensional flat expression with an Oriental context. If you look closely, the only three-dimensional depth in the painting comes from the shadow under the peasant's straw hat.
Secondly, the Gardener also features two important features of ukiyo-e art that cut the edges of the painting due to the pursuit of incompleteness of the picture, and the elevated perspective without the horizon. Although Van Gaugh followed the composition of the natural landscape used as a background for portraiture since the Renaissance, he did not draw the traditional horizon of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa into the painting, but raised the horizontal perspective to reveal only a large area of grass in the background and the trees cut at the top, which is similar to our mobile selfies today. Coupled with the fresh and bright tones that come from the entire portrait, the traces of ukiyo-e have clearly penetrated into Van Gogh's personal style, forming a unique painting language that combines east and west.
Boldini: "Whipping" the Belle Époque
Van Gogh was laid to rest in the French town of Orville in 1890, while Paris, the "fashion capital" of the time, was in the golden age of the "Belle Époque". Although the art of portraiture at this time was in decline due to the increasing popularity of photographic techniques, Giovanni Bordini, an Italian who lived in Paris for a long time, became the most popular and fashionable portrait painter of this period with his free and spontaneous brushstrokes and elegant and charming figures.
In 2016, the famous works of Bordini, which are full of eyes in the "Looking Back at the Belle Epoque - Italian Painting Exhibition of the Late 19th Century to the Beginning of the 20th Century", seem to be still in front of the eyes, and this time the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Italy has brought a portrait of a painter from the golden period "Marquise Roosevelt Luce" to the Millennium Monument. The painting was completed in 1896, when Bordini had been awarded the Order of the Legion of the Order of the Legion, the highest honor in France, and was highly regarded in Parisian high society, and his spontaneous and confident use of the brush can give a glimpse of the painter's excellent state at this time.
As the last master of traditional Western portraiture techniques, Boldini's most recognizable artistic language is revealed in The Marquise of Roosevelt Luce. Friends with Impressionists such as Manet and Degas, he obviously knew the creative techniques of this group, so he skillfully blended the appearance of a realistic and rigorous noblewoman with the gorgeous abstract dress that seemed to be smeared wantonly, and the marquise with fair skin and a luxurious face looked directly at the viewer, and a long dress scattered in front of him was intertwined with a long red and white dress, and order and casualness were sprinkled on the canvas at the same time, forming a "Whiplash" painting style that dazzled the viewer and "combined work and writing".
From the end of the 19th century to the present, Bordini's portrait of a noblewoman has long been a visual symbol representing the "Belle Époque" in Paris, along with the colorful lithograph posters of Lautrec and Mucha, but if it is classified, it should still belong to the traditional Western portraits with a modern sense.
Modigliani: From realistic to god-like
While Bordini was in full swing in Paris, the young Amedeo Modigliani (nicknamed "Modi" during the Paris period) came into contact with his paintings. His early portraits of the Paris period were influenced by the former, and in Portrait of Hanka Zabrovka he already possessed a unique personal style. The work was completed in 1917, during the golden age of the painter's creation, and his only solo exhibition, which was criticized, was held in the same year. The group on display in the exhibition was considered offensive at the time, and the "Nudes on the Side" series, which is priced today, was commissioned by Modi's patron and agent Leopold Zabrovka, and the Portrait of Hanka Zabrovka, which was loaned to the Millennium Monument as a "poster" model, was Zabrovka's wife.
Modigliani painted several portraits of the Zabrovkas, all with slender cheeks and noses, as well as slender eyes and neck. These of his most iconic portrait elements are thought to have been influenced by the Siena school of the fourteenth century, but there are also traces of sixteenth-century "Mannerism" that advocated asymmetrical composition and discordant proportions. Another detail that should not be overlooked is that Modi has a keen interest in ancient civilizations. In addition to painting he was an excellent sculptor, specializing in sculpture from 1909 to 1914. The same qualities in his portraits and sculptural busts are inseparable from the influence of ancient Egypt, African tribes and ancient Greek Cycladic civilizations.
Modigliani, who came to Paris in the early 20th century, took the trouble to wander through the Louvre to draw inspiration. Between 1910 and 1911, the Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova, on a visit to the Louvre accompanied by Modi, lamented: "He showed a crazy interest in Egyptian civilization." "The uninterrupted lines linking the eyebrows to the nose, the extremely stretched face and the geometry of the mouth in the sculpture are enough to see the artist's preference for African tribal art." During the period when he concentrated on sculpture, Modigliani was also able to become friends with the Romanian sculptor Konstantin Brancusi. The latter, in addition to giving him many technical advice on the technical aspects of sculpture, also "transmitted" his personal obsession with Cycladic civilization to the talented Modi. Whether it is the oval flat face shape in sculpture or portrait painting, and the excessive emphasis on the vertical feeling of the bridge of the nose, the viewer can read his pursuit of minimalist forms and his enthusiasm for ancient civilizations.
Under Modigliani's pen, objective realism is no longer a prerequisite, and subjective imagery is the final effect. It was not until the twentieth century that Western portraiture finally got rid of the shackles of scientific rationality and tradition and developed into the "god-like" state of mainland figure painting.
Kiriko: Retro after "Metaphysics"
In addition to the portraits of the above three masters, the works of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico, one of the initiators of the "Metaphysical School", are also the key exhibits of this "Centennial Infinity Exhibition". In order to highlight the importance attached to this unit, the exhibition of the China Millennium Monument includes four authentic works of Chirico, and the organizers also specially designed an orange space full of mirrors, humanoid molds and clocks hanging on the arch walls in the exhibition hall to pay tribute to the painter.
Of the four works, including portraits, still lifes and two of the most representative "metaphysical schools", there is one of his self-portraits, and interestingly, of the four portraits of the masters that appear in the exhibition above, the most traditional one is actually the most recently completed Kirico's Self-Portrait. The painting not only uses the most classic 3/4 side face bust in the history of Western art, which is presented in a triangular composition, but also uses the tempera painting technique that is earlier than oil paint. Kiriko looks solemnly at the viewer with a melancholy face, the light source falling from the upper right illuminates his cheeks and a strand of blonde hair in front of his forehead, the background behind him with blue sky and white clouds and town scenery follows the Italian iconographic tradition of the renaissance, the red curtain opens in the upper left and right corners evokes raphael's classic "Sistine Madonna", and the wooden frame at the bottom of the picture is like a picture frame and a wooden frame on the terrace, which maintains the sense of retrospect of the whole self-portrait.
When admiring this work up close, the author also vaguely felt from the painter's face similar brushstrokes and textures to many ancient Egyptian Fayoum portraits exhibited at the China Millennium Monument at this time last year, and this intuition is actually well documented. In his memoirs, Kiriko recounted that while studying tempera painting techniques, he had read The Techniques of Böcklin, written by the Austrian painter Ernst Berger, detailing the techniques of arnold Böcklin, the great Swiss painter of the nineteenth century. It is also recorded that Buchlin visited a special exhibition of Fayoum's portrait in Munich in the early 1880s, and after carefully studying and practicing the ancient Egyptian tempera painting techniques. It can be seen that Kirico's "retro" is actually intentional.
In November 1919, the painter published an article entitled "The Return of Craftsmanship", in which he advocated a return to the traditional Western painting methods and iconography. The article heralded a sudden shift in his "metaphysical" artistic orientation, when he was inspired by Renaissance masters such as Raphael and Luca Cignoleli to take a traditional classicist approach to creation, and thus became an outspoken opponent of twentieth-century modern art. Created in 1925, "Self-Portrait" completed this "retro" stage.
In summary, the "100 Years of Wuji Exhibition" of the China Millennium Monument condenses the thinking and transformation of Western portrait art after the advent of photography technology through four portraits painted by four painting masters who were active at the turn of the century. Among them, there is a flat expression of the "ukiyo-e fans" Van Gao's pen where things are combined; There is a geometric stretch of Modigliani's paintings that integrates ancient and modern; There are the fashionable "whiplash" portraits of Boldini that swept the "Belle Epoque" paris; There is also a tempera self-portrait of Kiriko tracing his roots. At the time of the transition from traditional techniques to modern expression at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, artistic individuals from different backgrounds vividly demonstrated the diversity of portrait art. However, despite the different styles of painting, the above-mentioned Western painting masters still seek their own unique painting languages on the basis of their deep understanding of traditional techniques and eclecticism with world civilization, innovating in the law and the law, rather than being imaginative. In the final analysis, the style can be "infinite", but the content must be "law-abiding".