On the afternoon of July 10, 2021, at the Li Zijian Art Museum in Changsha, Zheng Xiaojuan, Jiang Kun and his wife took photos with Gan Jianhua and Wang Jinfang.
Cuicui (Chinese painting) 110×100cm Zheng Xiaojuan 1993.
See them both red dust as a companion galloping horses
Text/Gan Jianhua
"Eighty Couples Calligraphy and Painting Life - 'The Two of Us': Jiang Kun Zheng Xiaojuan Painting Exhibition", opened on July 10 at Changsha Li Zijian Art Museum. The exhibition of 300 masterpieces of Chinese paintings by the two artists is also the largest exhibition in their lives, hanging in five halls. The theme of the exhibition, "We Two", gives a deep and special connotation, showing the artistic life journey of holding the hand of the son and growing old with the son.
My friends and I were invited from Hengyang to participate in the opening ceremony of the exhibition, not to mention how happy we were, of course, more respect and admiration. In such a sunny and hot weather, the ink poetry and workmanship of two respectable old artists are heavy, but they blow through our hearts like a breeze, and we can enjoy an elegant and outstanding artistic feast.
I met Jiang Kun and Zheng Xiaojuan 10 years ago. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2011, I happened to see a copy of "Jiang Kun Painting Collection" at a friend's place, and I was very surprised at the time: we in Hunan actually hid such a relict and independent ink painting everyone! The famous Japanese landscape painter Higashiyama Kuiyi said in "The Beauty of Chinese Landscapes": "The beauty of scenery not only means the superiority of nature itself, but also reflects the local national culture, history and spirit. "Teacher Jiang's paintings are so fascinating: varied, highly generalized, very similar to objects, informal. At that time, I did not have much contact with the Hunan calligraphy and painting circles, and when I searched online, I found that there was this album in Shaoyang Changming Bookstore more than 100 kilometers away. Because the express delivery had stopped at that time, my wife and I drove there on the 28th of the 28th of the month of La, and bought the "Jiang Kun Painting Collection" and "Zheng Xiaojuan Works Collection". The guests who came to visit home during the Spring Festival all shared our heartfelt joy. About a month later, at the recommendation of an art professor at Hengyang Normal College, I went to the home of Jiang Kun and Zheng Xiaojuan in Changsha and bought several of their paintings. Later, in the Hunan auction market, he also acquired several of their works, and in articles about the Hunan art market, he repeatedly commented on and praised their paintings.
Hometown Sound (Chinese painting) 69cm×69cm Jiang Kun 2011.
Seeing "Hometown Sound" at the exhibition was quite kind, and I still remember that Teacher Jiang painted this designated painting for me in front of me, and now it has been hanging in my study. I still remember when Teacher Jiang was painting, Teacher Zheng told me next to me that this was a way to express a Dongzhai woman in a large and freehand way. At that time, I had never been to the ancient village of Dongjia in southwest Hunan Province, but I inexplicably had a good feeling of the old garden and the mountain. To describe it in literary language, he paints "typical characters in a typical environment", that is, a unique and proprietary "this one". Dong family women not only have a graceful posture, but also have an elegant temperament, and have the charm of oriental art. Carrying flowers or vegetable baskets on their shoulders, they flew towards us, and the natural beauty, the classical beauty, could not be described in words. "There is poetry and bookishness in the belly", this sentence is also most appropriate for Teacher Jiang, I heard that he has published novellas before, and the prose he wrote in his later years also shines with the light of thought. Once at his house, he discussed with me the spiritual qualities of Huxiang culture. I think that his Xiangqian Cottage, Dongting Lake District, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and Three Gorges of the Yangtze River series of fine products have a well-known "eclectic and innovative spirit of daring to be the first".
Open the history of Chinese art, husband and wife singing harmony, Han Mo flowers, since the Song Dynasty there were Zhao Defu and Li Qingzhao, the Yuan Dynasty had Zhao Mengfu and Guan Sheng, the Ming Dynasty had Chen Laolian and Hu Huahua, Qian Qianyi and Liu Ruyi, and the Qing Dynasty had Luo Liangfeng and Fang Wanyi, Hua Silla and Fang Bailian. There are more husband and wife painters in the modern and modern painting world, and we are familiar with Wu Hufan and Pan Jingshu, Xie Zhiliu and Chen Peiqiu, Chen Shaomei and Feng Zhonglian, Wu Zuoren and Xiao Shufang, Liu Lishang and Yu Zhizhen, Zhang Boju and Pan Su, Huang Miaozi and Yu Feng, Lu Shen and Zhou Sicong, Zhao Guojing and Wang Meifang. In May 2017, at the West Taihu Art Museum in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, an exhibition of the works of the two painters was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Liu Haisu's wife, Xia Yiqiao, and specially invited the nine most representative couples of contemporary painters to participate in the exhibition. In addition to Jiang Kun and Zheng Xiaojuan, Chen Lusheng and Zhang Weixing, who are present today, the other seven pairs are Liu Boshu and He Yunlan, Li Baolin and Chen Yadan, Chen Zhangji and Guan Yi, Ma Zhensheng and Zhu Licun, Yang Lizhou and Wang Yingchun, Pan Gongkai and Li Guoyi, Zheng Junli and Wei Shu, thus leaving a good story in the history of Chinese art. In my personal opinion, Compared with other painters, Jiang Kun and Zheng Xiaojuan's level of standing shoulder to shoulder can be described as quite prominent. Among the many painters in the country, there are not many who can go to their 80s to jointly hold a large exhibition. In this regard, the exhibition of "the two of us" is also particularly eye-catching.
Teacher Jiang and Teacher Zheng met at the Hunan Academy of Arts, and in the year I was born, they graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Hunan Normal College. Since studying painting, they have been together for more than 60 years. They have a common point in their creation, the subject matter is the rivers and the land and the industrious and kind people, the expression methods are constantly exploring and innovating, neither repeating others, but also try not to repeat themselves, not rushing to achieve quick success, not coveting false names, in their own words, that is, "we adhere to the duty of a painter." Chen Zizhuang said when talking about what is Yipin: "Plain and innocent, the feelings are real, not intentionally portrayed and reached the realm of forgetting things and things." In order to attain the realm of forgetting both things and things, we must deepen our personal cultivation and make our spirit one with all things in heaven and earth. Looking at the paintings of Jiang and Zheng after middle age, I feel that they are almost close, and the appeal given to people is both large and deep.
"Miaoling Catching Autumn" (Chinese painting) 160×480cm Jiang Kun and Zheng Xiaojuan, 1982.
Teacher Zheng Xiaojuan is famous for her heavy color of gongbi, and Hunan can become a big province of Chinese gongbi painting, and Teacher Zheng has made great contributions. Her masterpiece has six different variations, the first of which is now in the National Academy of Painting of China, and two others have entered the annals of Chinese art history. "Cuicui" is the best painting I have ever seen in the theme of "Border City", which should hierogly reflect the sentimentality of Hmong girls and the beauty of the valley orchid in the mountains of western Hunan Province. Works such as "AMa", "Harvest", "Thatched House", "Sunning Pepper", "Lake Township Cloud", "Dance on the Grass" and other works, focusing on the combination of objects and situations, paying attention to the height of art and the depth of thought, have been affirmed by the giants of the painting world, and have been widely praised for decades. In particular, the famous work "Catching The Song Map", the musical rhythm of the linear composition is beautiful, full of the romantic feelings of Qu Yuan's poetry and the customs of Huxiang, which often makes me have an impulse to write poetry. Today, I saw "New Soldiers on the Lake" for the first time, which was the first gongbi painting created by Teacher Zheng in 1959, and was immediately selected for the national exhibition held by the newly completed National Art Museum of China. Standing in front of this painting, I suddenly felt how time was rushing, but the painter had never had a negative Shaohua. By the way, I personally saw these heavy color paintings of Teacher Zheng, which are very different from the effects seen in the album, and there is almost no "spirit of spirit" that is close to the original.
As early as ten days ago, I saw this exhibition news in WeChat, and the exhibition logo was Jiang Kun and Zheng Xiaojuan riding on a high horse, looking at the heroic posture in front of them with a spring breeze. At that time, the opening song of the Qiong Yao TV series "Huan Zhu Ge Ge", which was too hot to be fired more than 20 years ago, immediately sounded in my mind: "Let us be accompanied by red dust and live a dashing life; gallop horses and share the prosperity of the world." Teacher Zheng later told me that in 1981, when they were sketching in the Ili grassland in Xinjiang, Kazakh herders brought horses for them to ride, and Li Guanglie, a fellow Hunan painter, captured it. At that time, they were only in their early forties, but they were already well-known in Huxiang and even the national painting world. Today, 40 years later, they are still gods and immortals in the eyes of the world, and their spiritual appearance is a beautiful display of the soul, which makes people look up to the mountains.
True art never goes out of style, and real artists are always respected. Li Zijian Art Museum held this exhibition with the greatest intensity and the most important schedule, which vividly displayed the artistic achievements and life trajectories of the two predecessors in front of the eyes of the audience. The two painters, who have reached their old age, are still energetic on the road of artistic creation, searching up and down, looking forward to holding another exhibition at the age of ninety. They do not forget their original intentions, forge ahead, go deep into life, praise the earth, and depict the vastness of heaven and earth and the magic of all things. With their rich and full local feelings, deep and broad patriotism, and artistic shaping of ink brushes, they have created a rich and diverse, vivid and vivid art world with the essence of Chinese culture, which not only has a broad and profound impact on the art circle in Hunan, but also deserves the emulation of each of us who are engaged in artistic creation. (The pictures in this article are provided by the author)
Gan Jianhua is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the China Calligraphy and Painting Collectors Association, a member of the Art Committee of the Chinese Writers Calligraphy and Painting Academy, the vice president of the Hunan Writers Calligraphy and Painting Academy, a senior editor, a professor of geography, and a scholar of Huxiang culture. He founded the first college student poetry club on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and ran the poetry journal of the same name, Huangshuihe, which flowed into the torrent of The Chinese college student poetry movement in the 1980s. The poems have appeared in Chinese mainland, as well as newspapers and periodicals in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States, Canada, Spain, the Philippines and other countries, and have been selected for dozens of anthologies. He is the author of "Selected Geographical Poems of Gan Jianhua".