Who is this person? He actually has something to do with Guo Moruo, Shen Congwen, Li Kuchan, and Huang Yongyu, all of whom are master-level figures! Not to mention, this person is really not an ordinary cow, he said that he has surpassed the level of a master, but he made a big joke at the age of 86.
Maybe many readers have guessed, isn't it Fan Zeng, who just married his 36-year-old wife. What can a person do if he marries a daughter-in-law at the age of 86? Is marrying a wife four times in a lifetime too much? Hasn't Guo Moruo also married several times in his life? Shen Congwen married a beautiful woman like a flower and jade, Zhang Zhaohe, and he is still not satisfied, didn't he cheat twice; and Xu Beihong, Zhang Daqian, and so on, who are the masters of the painting world, have never been loyal to love? What can happen to the age difference between the husband and wife by half a century? Isn't the age difference between Yang Zhenning and Weng Fan even greater? Love is free, you love me, what kind of jokes are you making?
Of course, the joke is not about Fan Zeng's remarriage itself, but about it.
Fan Zeng is undoubtedly a leading figure in the Chinese art world, he is not only a first-class calligrapher and painter, but also a famous scholar and poet, he is known as a collection of poetry, calligraphy and painting. In particular, his paintings are even more remarkable, integrating landscapes, flowers and birds, and people. He also has a very special honor, that is, the "Chevalier de l'Ordre d'Honneur" awarded by the President of France, which can be described as a master among masters. No, people claim to have surpassed the master, he thought more than 30 years ago that he was a genius who only came out in 500 years, and he was "a master in 500 years".
Fan Zeng once said that there are six levels of painting, from bottom to top: painters, famous artists, everyone, masters, masters, and devils. So what level does he belong to? He's a more modest man, and he says, "...... The fourth grade has become a master, the phoenix Oubo, the fifth grade, called a great master, one in 500 years, and the sixth grade, which can be called the devil, has never seen it...... I sit and look forward to the day to come. "He mean, he's not at the top yet, there's room for improvement, hehe.
Since ancient times, it has been rare for scholars to call themselves masters, and Fan Zeng has already claimed to have surpassed the realm of masters. Today, let's take a look at how this Master Fan Chao got a cow.
On July 5, 1938, Fan Zeng was born in a family of poets and calligraphers in Nantong City, Jiangsu Province. According to genealogical records, his ancestors can be traced back to Fan Zhongyan in the Northern Song Dynasty. However, some people have verified that his ancestors can be traced all the way back to the Qin Dynasty, and he is a descendant of Xiang Yu's first strategist Fan Zeng. This can be seen from the fact that Fan Zeng's name is so similar to Fan Zeng. Less gossip, back to business.
Fan Zeng, the word ten wings, the number "Hug Chong Zhai Lord". His name is very unusual. "Ten wings" means ten wings, which is much stronger than the general "wings"; "Bao Chong" comes from the idiom "Bao Chong widow camp", the great poet Wei Yingwu of the Tang Dynasty has a poem saying: "Keeping silent and not stingy, hugging Chong and widow camp", which means that people should think less, drill less camp, and keep their minds calm and quiet, which is conducive to health preservation. It seems that Fan Zeng used this number to pursue a pure heart and few desires. As for whether he is pure-hearted and has few desires, then look down.
Fan Zeng has been a child prodigy since he was a child, he went to kindergarten at the age of 4, and once recited "The Story of Yueyang Tower" and "Mulan Ci" in the Nantong Children's Intelligence Competition, and won the first place in the special prize. After going to school at the age of 5, he has always been excellent in character and learning, and he is very talented in drawing. At the age of 13, he proudly joined the Nantong Art Association and has become a well-known little painter.
Fan Zeng was admitted to the History Department of Nankai University at the age of 17 and transferred to the Central Academy of Fine Arts at the age of 19. Since then, he has become a student of Chinese painting masters such as Jiang Zhaohe, Li Kuchan, Li Keran, Guo Weihui, Huang Yongyu and others, and has formed a deep friendship with these masters. Jiang Zhaohe's figure paintings and Li Kuchan's ink paintings had a great influence on Fan Zeng, especially Li Kuchan's bold personality also had a deep influence on him. Li Kuchan valued and trusted him very much, and the preface to the only large album he published in his life, "Li Kuchan's Paintings", was written by Fan Zeng.
There is no doubt that Fan Zeng was very talented in painting and achieved quite high achievements. Since the age of 30, he has created many hand-me-down works, such as "Chairman Mao in the Hunan Peasant Movement Training Institute", "Lu Xun Novel Illustration Collection", "Su Zi's Howling Picture", "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest", "Sleepwalking in the Sky", "Guangling San", etc., and there are also many calligraphy works, such as "The Story of Shuibo Liangshan" and "Xingshu Li Yishan Poems".
Fan Zeng's paintings have been praised by many celebrities and wise men, such as Zhao Puchu who said that he had "three unique poems, calligraphy and paintings"; Yang Zhenning said that his art was "once in a thousand years"; Cao Yu praised him as "a contemporary Wu Daozi"; Wang Meng said that he was a "living national treasure"; Qian Zhongshu said that he "was superior in his paintings, and he appeared in the outside world"; in addition, Ji Xianlin, Feng Jicai, Ye Jiaying, Ma Weidu, Chen Shiingshen, and other people from all walks of life did not hesitate to praise Fan Zeng.
But Fan Zeng's life was also controversial, and he was also quite disdainful and even quite contemptuous of some celebrities and masters, especially in terms of character.
For example, Fan Zeng's attachment to Guo Moruo. Some scholars said: Guo Moruo invested in politics, and Fan Zeng invested in Guo Moruo's opportunity. In 1962, Guo Moruo wrote the historical drama "Wen Ji Returns to Han", and Fan Zeng, who was 24 years old at the time, was about to graduate from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, so he decided to create a painting with the theme of "Wen Ji Returns to Han" as his graduation work. He put a lot of effort into it, and he did a good job. But after painting, I am not satisfied, and I want to improve my realm. So he inquired about the residence of Guo Moruo, then chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and stayed in front of his door, stopping the car to deliver his paintings when Guo Moruo went home.
Guo Moruo saw that the young man's painting was the same theme as his own play, and the painting was quite good, so he became a poet and wrote a poem on Fan Zeng's "Wen Ji Returns to Han" and signed it.
Fan Zeng was overjoyed, his painting with the poetry of Guo Moruo, the literary giant, left the name of Lao Guo, now it is difficult for him to think of being famous, and he suddenly felt that his value doubled, so he took this painting to the school to show it, and wanted to participate in the graduation exhibition.
This incident made Fan Zeng "famous overnight". However, his actions also made his teacher Jiang Zhaohe and the head of the department, the famous painter Ye Qianyu, very dissatisfied, thinking that he was climbing the dragon and attaching the phoenix, and his purpose was not pure, "relying on the celebrity light to fool the audience and falsely exaggerating his own speculative behavior", so he did not want him to participate in the exhibition. In the end, after intercession and negotiation with many parties, the school cherished talents after all, so it agreed to participate in Fan Zeng's "Wen Ji Returns to Hantu", but Guo Moruo's inscription must be covered.
Fan Zeng was unknown at that time, and Guo Moruo forgot about him after inscribed a poem to him. But in order to continue to cling to Guo Moruo, Fan Zeng began to curry favor with Guo's eldest son Guo Hanying's wife Xie Beiling, and called her "Sister En" every time they met, which made people disgusted him. Not only Xie Beiling, as long as it is Fan Zeng, a member of the Guo family, such as Guo Moruo's other children.
After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts, Fan Zeng faced the problem of assigning jobs. So he took aim at the literary master Shen Congwen again, and kept writing letters to Shen Congwen. In these letters, Fan Zeng even said emotionally that he once "dreamed that Mr. Shen was sick and came from Tianjin overnight." So the kind-hearted Shen Congwen was enthusiastic about contacting him, helping him to work in the Chinese History Museum, becoming his assistant, and drawing illustrations for the "Research on Ancient Chinese Costumes" in the compilation.
At that time, the two had a very strong relationship, Fan Zeng was commensurate with Mr. Shen Congwen, and Mr. Shen also took good care of Fan Zeng. found that Fan Zeng was living in difficulty, and Shen Congwen took out 20 yuan from his personal salary every month for half a year to support him.
But a few years later, China entered a period of literary and artistic turmoil, and Shen Congwen was also hit. At that time, many hot-blooded young people did not know what was going on, and they were confused to expose people, hurt people, post other people's big-character posters, etc., and make other people's reputations stink. Shen Congwen is often posted with big-character posters. However, what shocked him was that it was his "beloved apprentice" Fan Zeng who wrote big-character posters to expose and frame him the most.
At that time, Fan Zeng successively posted more than 12 big-character posters, exposing Shen Congwen's crimes as many as hundreds. He described Shen Congwen's home as "Pei Duofei's club", and also made up that Shen Congwen asked the female dependents of the family to dance with the guests and play pornographic records. He even said that Shen Congwen: "There is pus on his head, and it is rotten" and so on.
Shen Congwen was very indignant when he found out, and wrote "After reading it": "Very painful, huge shock!" Later, he mentioned it in "Letter to Zhang Zhaohe" and "Letter to Wang Zengqi", and thought that Fan Zeng was "insidious", liked to "harm others and benefit himself", "not serious enough in business" and so on.
Shen Congwen rarely talked about Fan Zeng publicly, but once in an interview with student Huang Nengfu, he talked about Fan Zeng: once Fan Zeng painted a portrait of Qu Yuan, Shen Congwen mentioned some mistakes in Qu Yuan's clothing, Fan Zeng was furious, "Your set is outdated, put away your set of knowledge, I approved it from above, you pull aside!"
Later, Fan Zeng wrote "My Grievances and Grievances with Shen Congwen" and "Autobiography", both of which generally acknowledged these things, but he defended that it was not his problem alone, "It was caused by the fact that everyone was also unable to subvert in the endless movements." "Put the blame on that era.
Similarly, Fan Zeng also betrayed his teacher, the master of Chinese painting, Li Kuchan. As mentioned earlier, Li Kuchan also took Fan Zeng very seriously, but Fan Zeng's character and arrogance led to the breakdown of the relationship between the two, and the specific reasons are different, but it is certain that Li Kuchan is very desperate for him. Before he died, he scolded Fan Zeng like this:
"The sub-line of the mountain wolf, the ambition has become rampant!"
Li Kuchan also said on his deathbed: "I don't have Fan Zeng as a student!" and specially explained to his descendants that he refused Fan Zeng's support after his death. In 1983, when Li Kuchan died, Fan Zeng came to attend the funeral, but was rejected by Mr. Li Kuchan's wife, children and disciples. Fortunately, one of Li Kuchan's disciples at that time, the famous painter Wan Zhaoyuan, saw Fan Zeng's embarrassing scene outside the door, so he let him in to attend the funeral.
For the master of Chinese painting Huang Yongyu, Fan Zeng was even more disrespectful. Huang Yongyu is also Fan Zeng's teacher. When Fan studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, his printmaking teacher was Huang Yongyu. Needless to say, Huang Yongyu also saw Fan Zeng's talent early on and took him more seriously. But the two later had a conflict.
One is that Huang Yongyu has always been unaccustomed to Fan Zeng's arrogance, and the other is that Huang Yongyu is Shen Congwen's cousin, and he already has an opinion on Fan Zeng's offense to Shen Congwen, so the two strange masters in the painting world do not buy each other.
Fan Zeng once boasted that he was a genius once in 500 years, and his painting had surpassed the level of a master, and in time, he could be compared with the Bada Shanren. Calligraphy is also surprisingly good: "As my personal calligraphy, I want to use Du Fu's poem to describe Li Bai's poem 'Fresh Yu Kaifu, Junyi Bao joins the army' to describe my words more appropriately...... You can tell a story like a person. What he means is that his calligraphy is also the best in the world. Because the first two lines of the poem "Fresh Yu Kaifu, Junyi Bao joins the army" are: "Bai is also invincible, and he thinks of nothing."
Of course, Huang Yongyu was very disdainful. At that time, Huang Yongyu painted a painting, in which a person squinted his eyes and pointed to the side with his right index finger, which was very expressive. The inscription on the painting reads: "You blow again". Of course, Huang Yongyu didn't say who this painting specifically refers to, just guess, hehe.
Fan Zeng, of course, was extremely angry. He once painted a picture of Huang Yongyu: in the painting, a man with an obscene face, wearing an Uncle Sam-style hat, holding a large pipe, and carrying a huge pen as a flat shoulder on his shoulder, on which are hung several small barrels and bags. The man also had a dog's tail hanging from under his buttocks. The text of the inscription is: "The Legend of the Scorpion - A Portrait of Huang Yongyu".
Fan Zeng also wrote a 10,000-character long essay "The Biography of the Scorpion - A Portrait of Huang Yongyu", angrily scolding Huang Yongyu, saying that he had a contradictory personality, was unsympathetic, and politically speculative; said that Huang Yongyu, a mountain man, had an ugly soul, just like a small reptile scorpion, and when crawling, he desperately carried everything on his body until he was crushed to death (scorpion is a kind of insect described in Liu Zongyuan's "Legend of Scorpion"). Since then, the conflict between the two has intensified.
At a gathering of friends, Fan Zeng and Huang Yongyu met unexpectedly. As the saying goes, if you don't speculate for more than half a sentence, Huang Yongyu stood up and said, "I want to hit someone today!" If it weren't for being pulled away by a friend, the two might have done it.
The mutual pinching of Huang Yongyu and Fan Zeng has become a public case in the art world.
In terms of love and marriage, Fan has been complained about a lot. He had four wives in his lifetime. The first is called Lin Xiu, and the two are love at first sight, such love is difficult to last long, and they divorced after 5 years of marriage.
His second wife, Bian Baohua, was a classmate of his classmates at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Bian Baohua has paid a lot to support Fan Zeng's career, she often does several jobs, and even her eyes are almost burned. In order not to delay Fan Zeng's work, even if she gave birth to a child, she went to the hospital alone. After marriage, the two had a daughter, Fan Xiaohui.
But this marriage was also very short, because Fan Zeng soon met the love of his life, Zhang Guiyun, which was his most criticized. Because the other party is the same as him, she is a married woman, and Zhang Guiyun's husband is still Fan Zeng's benefactor.
In the early 1970s, Fan Zeng met Xu Zunde, who was an actor in the propaganda team of the Ministry of Culture, and the two were very close and brothers. Although Fan Zeng tried his best to express himself during the literary and artistic turmoil, he did not escape the impact of the times, and he also became penniless and lived a rather embarrassing life, once sheltering in a warehouse full of discarded furniture next to the Forbidden City. At that time, Su Zunde often gave him some clothes and took care of him like a big brother.
Later, Xu Zunde and Fan Zeng were sent to the Wuqi Cadre School in Xianning, Hubei at the same time, and became difficult brothers. In the summer of that year, when the two returned to Beijing on vacation, Su Zunde invited Fan Zeng to his house for dinner, and Fan Zeng met Su's wife, Zhang Guiyun. Fan Zeng was immediately overwhelmed by his beauty. He once described the other party in the article as "like spring plums blooming with snow, and autumn flowers are covered with frost".
After that, he often took advantage of the interval between Su Zunde to perform in other places and made secret appointments with Zhang Guiyun. In order to chase Zhang Guiyun, Fan Zeng also took great pains. At that time, Su Zunde's house lived on the 14th floor, and in order to prevent the aunt who was driving the elevator from seeing him and becoming suspicious, he often climbed the stairs directly from the first floor to Zhang Guiyun's house on the 14th floor.
Fan Zeng maintained a lover relationship with Zhang Guiyun for more than 10 years, and finally in 1988, Fan Zeng married Zhang Guiyun at the age of 50 and changed her name to Nan Li. After marriage, the two were very affectionate.
There are also different opinions about this matter. Some people think that this is the freedom of marriage, no wonder Fan Zeng, and some people think that "friends and wives should not be bullied", Fan Zeng has done it, and besides, Su Dezun has never forgiven him in this matter.
In any case, Fan Zeng and Nan Li's marriage is harmonious, and Fan Zeng also publicly said: "I love both the country and the beauty, and I am willing to go to the end of the world with Nan Li, who has been in love for 20 years." ”
However, Fan Zeng and Nan Li did not "go to the end of the world together". Nanli passed away in 2021. The 83-year-old Fan once posted another article to express his grief for this: "Since Nan Li passed away suddenly at 22:40 on November 9, the heartfelt grief has been inseparable from me, looking at the wind and crying, I can't suppress myself." ”
However, the 80-year-old man did not "can't restrain himself" for long, only two years and 5 months later, on April 10 this year, 86-year-old Fan Zeng announced his marriage again in a high-profile manner, and the woman was Xu Meng, who was 50 years younger than him. As a result, public opinion was in an uproar. Of course, some people applauded: Master Fan is old and strong, the sword is not old, and he is rejuvenated!
But the ridicule seemed to be louder, saying that he was old and not serious, and he was still so amorous at the age of 86. In fact, from the perspective of freedom of love, Fan Zeng's move seems to be harmless, you can't deprive people of their right to love just because they are older, besides, Xu Meng is also willing to marry each other, can you manage it?
The problem is that Fan Zeng's marriage "official announcement" not only posted on Weibo, but also used his "pen like a rafter" to write a calligraphy work, maybe this work will become a masterpiece, worth more than 100 million. This officially announced work reads like this:
"My beloved wife Nan Li has been dead for nearly three years, initially due to grief and loneliness, and due to a slight cerebral infarction, her artistic career is difficult. Ms. Xu Meng's meticulous care made me fully recover physically and mentally. Xu Meng not only cares and encourages me to be evergreen in my art, but also contributes to China's excellent cultural traditions, and has a deep friendship. The story of the art forest is enough. ”
This marriage statement or calligraphy work is written in his unique "Fan style" calligraphy, and it is written on special colored paper, which is indeed formal and exquisite, and must be collected by future generations, and it is very valuable as a "cultural relic". However, it was this work that made a big joke.
Looking at the whole text, there are 110 words in total, and there are two typos. The first is that "it is difficult" is written as "it is difficult", and the second is that "deep affection" is written as "deep friendship". If this was written by a primary school student, it wouldn't matter, and Fan Zeng was known as a contemporary Confucian, a famous scholar, a super master of calligraphy and painting, and a talent who met once in 500 years, so he shouldn't make such a joke. Some people may say that it makes sense to use these two typos. But these two words are idioms, and since they are idioms, they can't change the words in them, which damages Lao Fan's so-called "excellent cultural traditions"!
The second joke is that Master Fan's work is a taboo in the tradition of calligraphy, that is, the mixing of traditional and simplified Chinese characters. The whole statement is that the traditional Chinese characters are used, but there are two words, namely the word "lift" for "struggling", and the word "guan" for "care" in simplified Chinese, which is puzzling.
Could it be that Fan Zeng can't write these two characters in traditional Chinese (these two characters do have more traditional strokes)? This is also impossible, and the word "guan" in this text appears twice, the first time is the "guan" of "care", and the traditional Chinese is used, and when it comes to "care", this "guan" is simplified. Then the only explanation is that Lao Fan is lazy in his pen, hehe.
The third joke is the last sentence in the article: "The story of the art forest, this is enough". If he marries a wife at the age of 86, is it a good story of Yilin, I'm afraid it's not his own decision? Many things are not wishful thinking on your part, you are very good when you say that you are very good, and if you say that it is a good story, it is a good story. In the eyes of many, this is probably not a "good story", but a joke.
In short, Fan Zeng can't be said to be of a low level, the problem is that he overestimates himself too much and is too arrogant. Moreover, it is not perfect enough in terms of personality, at least it can't be said to be "both virtue and art".
(Text/The Woman Who Told History, Mi Xue)