Wang Zuocai: The grassland imprint engraved with a knife and the spirit of the Mongolian horse
Author/Sun Shuheng
1. Wang Zuocai is the leading figure of Naiman Banner and even Horqin printmaking
When I returned to my hometown during the Qingming Festival, I went to the Naiman Printmaking Institute and visited the printmaker Wang Zuocai. Wang Zuocai is not tall, simple, low-key, upright, talkative, and has a spark of thought in every word, telling the story of the development of Chinese and personal printmaking.
The history of modern Chinese printmaking is not long. For example, since the beginning of the last century, Li Shutong supported the establishment of the Leshi Society in Zhejiang No. 1 Normal School, and it has only been a hundred years. With the Chinese New Democratic Revolution, printmaking was used as a propaganda tool to throw guns and daggers, ruthlessly exposing and lashing out at the darkness of the old society, and the content and subject matter of printmaking works during this period were closely related to the violent turmoil in Chinese society and the revolutionary process. However, they have laid the inner temperament and spiritual character of realistic care for modern Chinese printmaking.
And Zheli woodblock prints, since the 60s of the last century, through the efforts of several generations of printmaking creators, have formed a general trend, and Naiman Banner is an important town for printmaking. Wang Zuocai is the leader of Naiman Banner and even the entire Horqin printmaking, from the beginning of his creation to the present, more than 40 years of creative process, under his drive, Naiman printmaking slowly formed a huge team, a new force of Horqin printmaking.
Wang Zuocai's prints have strong national characteristics, distinctive local characteristics and the characteristics of the times that keep pace with the times, the content comes from the production and life of the Mongolian people, natural scenery and customs, rough lines, concise brushwork, simple taste, it is this strong national style, so that Wang Zuocai's prints are majestic, atmospheric, simple, elegant, and shocking.
Wang Zuocai is a member of the Chinese Artists Association, the former director of the Inner Mongolia Artists Association, the former vice chairman of the Tongliao Artists Association, and was awarded the "Master of Printmaking Skills" by the Tongliao Municipal People's Government. His printmaking works have participated in the National Art Exhibition 16 times and won the bronze medal twice.
2. Painting is a kind of faith, and only persistence can make us paint the beauty in our hearts.
Wang Zuocai was born in 1959 in Xingshuyingzi, Tuchengzi Township, Naiman Banner, a small village on the west bank of the Busy Niu River, his parents are ordinary farmers, Wang Zuocai liked painting since he was a child, and when he was in junior high school, he stayed in the township at that time, and he began to like the "villain book", he copied "Three Kingdoms", "Red Lantern", "Huang Jiguang" He also likes to read history books, likes composition and poetry, and attracted the attention of the new Chinese teacher Wang Dezhong, who graduated from the Chinese Department of the Inner Mongolia Normal University for Nationalities at that time. During the winter vacation, Mr. Wang went back to the Inner Mongolia Normal University for Nationalities to borrow several Soviet sketches and sketches art books from the forefront of the world, sketches of workers, peasants and soldiers, Chinese painting knowledge, etc., so that Wang Zuocai opened his mind, sketching from still life, copying, sketching, a nose can be painted for a day, looking for classmates as models, the more they paint, the more they paint, the more they look, forty years later, some students still keep it. The secret heart of the individual, inspiration and enthusiasm burst out. The compositions of these paintings are usually simple, but they have a strong sense of three-dimensionality, profound meaning, full of movement, and contain a sense of movement. The paintings appear fragmentary, uncertain and experimental. It is not an exaggeration for Mr. Wang to be Wang Zuocai's enlightenment teacher.
After graduating from high school, Wang Zuocai did not take the college entrance examination, and he did not know that there was an art school. Wang Zuocai went to his grandmother's house in Beipiao County, Liaoning, and his grandmother asked him to go to Shenyang to see, and when he arrived at the corridor of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, it was full of sketches, all of which were basic creations and were very inspiring.
After returning, Wang Zuocai went deep into the rural life, painting the basic construction of farmland at that time, and the life of peasants fighting the heavens and the earth.
In 1978, I took the college entrance examination and applied for Northeast Normal University, but I passed the professional course, and my math score was poor and I failed.
In 1980, he took the college entrance examination, took a paper for college and secondary school, applied for Inner Mongolia Normal University for Nationalities and Zhemeng Normal School, was admitted to Zhemeng Normal School, and was assigned to Naiman Normal School as a teacher after graduation, teaching six classes of art classes. In his spare time, he paints Chinese paintings.
Mr. Sa Renzhang and Mr. Liu Baoping, the chairman of the Zhemeng Artists Association, opened the precedent of woodblock printmaking in Zheli, and the development and flow of decades have quietly changed with the development of the times, and then to "Horqin Printmaking".
In 1983, Wang Zuocai began to engage in printmaking, at that time Naiman's prints were blank, and later there were Baozhu, An Guangyou, Ulan Bala and Li Zhuangzi...
At that time, it was regarded as a matter of "not doing business", but Wang Zuocai had no distractions and painted quietly whenever he had time. The principal at that time, Aicai, said that he could make plans with pen, ink, paper and paint, and gave great support to Wang Zuocai.
Later, I came to No. 1 Middle School to teach junior high school art classes, and later when junior high school was withdrawn, I taught art appreciation classes to high schools. Later, some people said that taking art appreciation classes was a waste of time, so there were no classes and errands in the academic affairs office. In 1989, three works, "Song and Dream", "Prairie Love" and "Late Return", participated in the Inner Mongolia Art Exhibition.
Wang Zuocai opened an art specialty class. That is, the "small three gates", at first there were eight or nine people, and later it reached thirty or forty people, and in 1991, four students were admitted to the university. The school gave a bonus of 50 yuan to a student who was admitted to the exam, and gave 200 yuan, and Wang Zuocai bought art books and subscribed to art publications.
In 1991, Zhemeng's prints entered the Beijing Exhibition, with the theme of strange willows, "The Moon in the Autumn Forest" and "The Desert Wind" were exhibited, among which "The Moon in the Autumn Forest" was published in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, which had a great influence in the school and completely changed the status of the painting teacher as an art teacher.
3. Paying attention to the grassland and the fate of human beings is regarded as an eternal theme, and the grassland has become a source of inspiration for printmaking.
Wang Zuocai's works contain the characteristics of realism and modernism, and are inclusive.
In order to improve himself, from 1998 to 2004, Wang Zuocai went to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing two or three times a year at his own expense.
Inspired by the "Centennial Exhibition of Western Painting", Western Expressionism, Impressionism, and Abstraction transcend life and reality, pay attention to artistic language, and express the author's personality.
In particular, Munch, a representative painter of German Expressionism, has a restless beating line, just as the wind blows in the grassland, and the grassland has a sense of movement. Wang Zuocai combined foreign and grassland to create "Autumn Wind", which won the bronze medal in the 11th National Printmaking Exhibition in 1992.
Let Wang Zuocai open his mind, thoroughly understand printmaking creation, artistic processing, and induction and improvement. In 1998, "Grass Wind" won another bronze award.
For the artist personally, his dedication to printmaking is not only reflected in his creation, but also in the spiritual inner part of his later life path.
It can be seen that leading the trend of the moment, there are not only the vivid and bright colors of traditional New Year paintings, but also the sharp and vigorous woodcarving knife method from modern European prints, which is a unique artistic achievement of the collision and blending of traditional and modern, Eastern and Western aesthetic tastes.
Fourth, behind Wang Zuocai's artistic paradigm there are not only mature and rich artistic thoughts, but also unique personal cultural imprints
In Wang Zuocai's studio, Wang Zuocai is working on the Mongolian Horse series, a total of 20 works, including horse mounting, horse taming, horse racing and equestrian series. He also painted the Inner Mongolian Cavalry Division, the Mongolian Horse West Expedition and the Mongolian Horse in the New Period.
Speaking of painting horses and carving horses, Wang Zuocai said that there is a origin. Wang Zuocai's father drove a carriage for the production team in the village, the three horses were bought from the pastoral area, after the work, Wang Zuocai put the horse to his father, all of them were led by a rope, and he didn't move when he was full, Wang Zuocai liked the jujube red horse the most, once downhill, the jujube red horse put two front hooves on Wang Zuocai's shoulder, Wang Zuocai was frightened, and his father said, his father said that it was to show favor to people, there were feelings, and the horse was human. In 1980, the village was divided into fields, and the jujube red horse also caught the lot, and the crops in the wasteland opened by the jujube red horse grew gratifyingly, and the grain was enough to eat for three years, which was a horse of a prosperous family. Later, in Beipiao City, Liaoning Province, he told many stories of cavalry and horses at his uncle's house who fought a sniper war in Montenegro in the Liberation War, and he created horses as the object.
It is free from the barriers of ideological service and artistic instrumentalization, and thus pure freedom and the personal spiritual expression of soul mates. I have to admire Wang Zuocai's keen insight and feelings for his family and country.
5. After years of practice, I have a complete creative system and visual symbols
In the time dimension of Wang Zuocai's works, we can once again see the extraordinary artistic creativity of printmakers.
In more than 40 years of artistic practice, he has gradually constructed his own psychological positioning and artistic paradigm. Wang Zuocai's perception is very deep, open-minded and poetic.
First, it can endure loneliness and have the spirit of perseverance. Once the administrative unit asked Wang Zuocai, saying that the government department had a future, Wang Zuocai politely declined, and painting also has a future.
The second is that art has no borders, and it is good at learning and learning from Western aesthetic art ideas and creative methods, combining Chinese and Western, and integrating nationalities, so that printmaking art can be rich and complete, providing a sample context and path.
The third is that the painter should have a sense of family and country, go deeper into life, sketch more, and extract materials from actual life, so that the prints he creates can have warmth and thought.
Fourth, family support is the motivation for Wang Zuocai to persist in creating prints, and he is grateful for the encouragement and support of his lover who is a doctor. Sometimes inspiration comes to people, and he gets up in the middle of the night to draw a few strokes, and his lover never complains, always encouraging him to move forward.
Fifth, Wang Zuocai has always mentioned one person, that is, Li Yushan, the former deputy secretary of the Flag Committee, without Secretary Li, there would be no Naiman Printmaking Institute, and there would be no Naiman Printmaking...
Naiman's printmaking works began to enter the top domestic platform. Wang Zuocai not only loves printmaking and pays attention to the inheritance and development of printmaking art, and now many printmakers in Naiman Printmaking Institute are his students. It is precisely because of such printmakers that he has led the development of Naiman printmaking with practical actions.
(Author's file: Sun Shuheng, pen name Hengxin Yongzai, Inner Mongolia Naiman Bannerman, member of China Financial Writers Association, member of China Essayists Association, member of Inner Mongolia Writers Association, member of Inner Mongolia Poetry Society, member of Western Essayists Society, deputy secretary-general of Inner Mongolia Popular Literature and Art Research Association, senior researcher and deputy secretary-general of Inner Mongolia Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting Research Association)