Dong Xinbin, born on April 18, 1939 in Zhangjing Town, Wuxi, studied calligraphy at the age of six under the tutelage of Mr. Zhang Yungeng, studied Chinese painting at the age of 14 with the famous painter Qin Guliu, and was admitted to the High School Affiliated to Nanjing University of the Arts at the age of 19 to study Western painting. After graduation, he worked as a soldier, worker, and doctor, and in 1979, he was admitted to Nanyi again and became a graduate student of landscape painting under President Liu Haisu. In 1982, he was assigned to the Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Traditional Chinese Painting to engage in landscape painting and served as the director of the theoretical studio. In 1994, he was hired as a national first-class artist, and at the same time, he was hired as an art consultant of the Foreign Art Exhibition Center of the Ministry of Culture of China. He died of illness on October 15, 2002 at the age of 63.
Dong Xinbin is a Chinese painter who loves the traditional culture of the Chinese nation and cares about the cause of human cultural progress. He cares about his students very much, loves his juniors, has a strong sense of justice, and although his life has been bumpy, he is unswerving, and he is also a rare artist with outstanding personality and full of legend. Dong Xinbin specializes in landscapes, part-time figures, flowers and birds, and is good at theoretical research, as well as calligraphy, seal carving, poetry, prose, martial arts, traditional Chinese medicine, philosophy, etc. Since 1985, with the assistance of his students, he has completed pioneering and systematic theoretical works such as "Theory of the Dual Category of Chinese Painting", "Theory of Six Laws of Ecology", and "The Magic Language of the Sun: An Introduction to Human Cultural Ecology", which can be regarded as the founder of the construction of the discipline of Chinese painting. Since 1982, he has held many solo exhibitions at the Nanyi Exhibition Hall, Jiangsu Art Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition Hall, and National Art Museum of China. In 1989, Taipei's "Lion Art" published Dong Xinbin's album, and journals such as "Art Series", "Jiangsu Pictorial", "Art Garden", "Southeast Culture", "Fine Arts" and "Rong Bao Zhai" have been published many times, and Yilin Publishing House published a large-scale album "Dong Xinbin's Paintings" in 1998, which made his painting theory and painting achievements widely known, and as a master of Chinese painting who rose at the end of the 20th century, he established an important position in the history of Chinese painting.
Dong Xinbin has studied both Chinese and Western paintings, has a strict depth of ontological research on Chinese painting, and has both theory and law, and has made comprehensive and systematic breakthroughs and innovations in all aspects of Chinese painting, such as brush, ink, color, modeling, chapter method, and even tools and materials. In the 80s, he became famous in the Chinese painting world for establishing a strong personal style with his chic and smooth center. In the first half of the 90s, he devoted himself to the study of ink, using more dignified and solid lines, supplemented by splashing ink and accumulating ink, and his painting style was simple and majestic. After the second half of the 90s, he devoted himself to the study of color, using color as ink and writing as a substitute, showing the highest spiritual realm and artistic skills in his boldness, and his painting style was brilliant. Looking at Mr. Dong Xinbin's artistic achievements, he deserves to be regarded as another important Chinese painter with a strong spirit of the times and genre influence in the rise of the Chinese painting scene since the 80s of the last century. Dong Xinbin's paintings, his contemporaries of art historians and colleagues have said a lot, many of which have profound understanding and conclusions. According to my personal feelings and thoughts, I would like to talk about my superficial understanding of the connotation of Dong Xinbin's paintings.
1. Temple consciousness and affectionate knowledge
Dong Xinbin believes that the development of Chinese painting is parallel to the history of Chinese thought and is an important part of the cultural development of the Chinese nation.
In particular, the development, rise and fall of Confucian culture had the greatest impact on it.
(Dong Xinbin's "Vertical and Horizontal Chinese Painting")
Dong Xinbin believes that the culture that plays a leading role in the development of Chinese painting should be Confucian culture, which is quite different from Xu Fuguan's judgment of Lao Zhuang Thought as the main axis of Chinese artistic thought, but as a cultural value judgment, there is indeed no lack of insight. As the soul and core of Chinese painting, Confucian culture has given birth to a series of ideological foundations of Chinese painting, which is the promotion of cosmic consciousness and world spirit, and downward is the profound experience and feeling of nature, as well as the awareness of social customs and personnel. In particular, the temple consciousness played a decisive role in the formation of the Chinese painting model. Eventually, it became a kind of political consciousness and cultural consciousness, and became the source of the spiritual image of Chinese painting. Under the confrontation and competition between Chinese and Western cultures, he reshaped this traditional cultural consciousness, combined Zhou Yi Thought and Mao Zedong Thought, and deeply integrated Mao Zedong's ideological system with the Great Yi spirit to form a new image, which is a profound reflection of this temple consciousness and cultural complex. He hoped that he, like Gu Kaizhi, Li Sixun, Yan Liben (right prime minister), Su Shi, Zhao Mengfu, Dong Qichang, Li Ruiqing and others in history, would not only be able to make contributions to the country, but also be able to carry out creative work in the field of Chinese painting. Integrating the inside and outside, integrating the Chinese and the Western, effectively blending the spiritual axis and the main body of personality, and carrying out the difficult reconstruction of Chinese culture on the cultural level that has been broken, its good intentions and outstanding efforts are extraordinary. This ideological orientation of his has a certain cultural origin with the ideological movements of the 20th century neo-Confucians such as Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili, Feng Youlan, He Lin, and Mou Zongsan. The abstract inheritance of cosmic consciousness, national consciousness and cultural system, connecting with the pulse of modern scholarship, traveling inside and outside Confucian norms, integrating China and the West, and creating a new life on its own, can be regarded as a huge shift in the spiritual path of Chinese painting under the conditions of modern history, politics and culture. The traditional cultural factors and modern spirit presented in his works, such as ox, pine, wind and rain, boat bridge, moon, fisherman, and Jiangnan house, all show his value choice at the level of Confucian culture, as his poem says:
When he was forty-one years old, he once bloomed a hundred flowers to reward the sky.
The strange anger is the Central Plains, and the pen art is fragrant through the frost and the sky.
(Dong Xinbin's inscription painting "Han Dynasty White Plum Picture")
That is, it contains a very deep sense of family and country and a profound Confucian value orientation.
The deep infiltration of Confucianism, the spirit of the Great Yi and the ideological concepts formed by Mao Zedong's ideological system represented by Confucius enabled Dong Xinbin to transcend vulgar social and political science and cultivate his character of greatness, loneliness, arbitrariness and arrogance. He not only has a common language with politicians and experts engaged in basic research, but also has a huge estrangement and even conflict with the bureaucracy of the political world and the shallow and vulgar style of the art world, which makes him more and more lonely. It is precisely because of this that he has a very deep cultural mind and political feelings. Affectionate and insightful, all in one. The deeper the understanding of history, society, nature, and culture, the more serious this complex becomes. His respect for Shi Lu, his lifelong admiration for the paintings and creations of Qin Guliu, Lu Fengzi, Chen Zhifo, and Liu Haisu, and his awe for culture and originality are a deep recognition of China's native culture, but it also buried a huge personal tragedy:
Mr. 86 (according to: referring to Liu Haisu) asked me to compose a poem, saying that the dialogue between teachers and students, there are seven words and eight sentences:
The nine heavens are home, and the wind and rain, blood and tears stain China.
Xinhai shook like thunder, and five or seven years later, the pen gave birth to flowers.
The ups and downs of the art sea are the way, and the Danqing world is the school.
Who learns Sima to cry in the Spring and Autumn Period, Zhuo Ran laughs at the world independently.
From the depressive tone and strong spirit of the poem, it can be seen that Dong Xinbin's ideal and value ethics and helplessness in major historical situations imply the emptiness after the disintegration of traditional values under modern social conditions, and the serious conflict caused by the high enhancement of temple consciousness and the huge development of individuality, which makes Dong Xinbin face a serious spiritual dilemma. Some practices and ideas may seem out of place to some, but he merges the two and tries to find a path of development from them, and his frustration is understandable. Cui Yu cried that Li Shangyin was "vain and talented, and he had never opened his arms all his life", Yongzhong cried that Cao Xueqin "hated and didn't know each other at the same time, and cried Cao Hou several times", he was not known, he didn't meet Huaicai, and his personal experience was like this, as a kind of cultural and ecological community with spirit and life, he was forced to decline, so why not? Dong Xinbin repeatedly wrote "Tablet Talent Map" (It is related to the fact that the stele of Yangshan chiseled in the Ming Dynasty is not used, these three steles are chiseled by Zhu Di Xinggong, which is seven times that of the current Xiaoling Shengong Shengde Stele, which is laborious and is not used, and has repeatedly sighed for the author), and the inscription "The stele is not born in the flat place". This is the same as the personal and family encounters of Li Shangyin, Xin Qiji and others who were highly talented and were discarded and lamented as "heroic monuments":
Ren Fang had a good reputation back then, but he was the most pitiful.
When Liangtai was first built, he should be melancholy, and Xiao Gong was not allowed to be a cavalryman.
(Li Shangyin, "Reading Ren Yansheng's Monument")
There is no media in the country, and when you enter the palace, you are jealous, and you have damaged your eyebrows. Look at the public like the moon, the brilliance of the stars is scarce. Sleeve up the mountains and flowing water, listen to the frogs, and advocate the barren pond. Article hand, straight must be mended, algae fire Zongyi.
The idiot is on business, Wu silkworms are entangled, and they spit out silk. Fortunately, one branch is thick and steady, and the three paths are newly treated. And about the wind and moon by the lake, fame and fame, who knows. Du Xiu asked, heroes are eternal, and there is no monument in the barren grass.
(Xin Qiji's "Man Tingfang and Hong Cheng Xiang Jing Boyun")
Qu Yuan's metaphor of vanilla beauty, the tragedy, Shen Xiong and emptiness in Xin's words, the lament of Tongling Baoyu in "Dream of Red Mansions" and Dong Xinbin's unforgetful theme of "Tablet Talent" all reflect the anguish caused by the abandonment of high-level talents. The immersion of Chinese cultural temperament and the attempt to transcend under modern conditions, the deep immersion of political complexes, temple consciousness and cosmic consciousness have certainly made Chinese painting achieve overall publicity, but it also inevitably brought about an overall tragic image, which is very deeply reflected in Dong Xinbin's paintings. Due to the pressure of reality, his ambitions cannot be realized, so that his works exude a lonely and uneven and cold atmosphere. The picture is clear and deep, and the rich emotional world is implied in the swaying of feelings. But he couldn't stop the eventual situation from happening:
The end of the road is empty, and all relatives are scattered.
("For the skyscraper on the previous floor, this time to make Yao Shun talk")
Until his death, he left a masterpiece for the ages:
Daguan Dajiang, three rivers and four fields, just a sigh.
Expressing his bitter and sad state of mind, this is Einsteinian loneliness, although he has to stay away from the crowd in the crowd, and he can't forget the people he has fought for all his life, which is a great loneliness. High-talented and promising people are often not crazy, that is, they fall into ruthlessness, and they can rarely take the meanness as a defender. Although the loneliness and the pain of living alone after mastery make the spirit enter a state of soberness and clarity, it also brings a serious imbalance between emotion and reason.
In any case, Dong Xinbin's exploration of painting theory and practice fully shows that it is entirely possible to get out of the path different from the quintessence of the country, the Western school, and the integration of Chinese and Western cultures in harmony with reality, the in-depth development of the transformation of Chinese cultural modernity, the continuous deepening of ontological culture, and the great transcendence of Chinese ontological culture. It is precisely because of the gathering and conflict of various contradictions that Dong Xinbin's cultural spirit and lofty painting realm have been created, which is the great favor of culture for him.
2. Formal language
Dong Xinbin's use of the language of Chinese painting has also formed a very strong personality, among which the "Southern Route" is particularly prominent:
Judging from the current situation of new literati painting, two styles have been roughly formed: "Southern Line" and "Northern Style". Southern painters represented by Dong Xinbin, Zhu Xinjian, and Wang Mengqi in Nanjing emphasized the expression of lines...... Dong Xinbin is one of the most influential painters, both in theory and in his art, providing an example of how the inner impulse of the individual and the positive effects of traditional culture can be combined in the contemporary era.
(Li Xianting, "The Southern Line and the North: The Rough Formation of Two Styles of New Literati Painting")
Although Dong Xinbin did not recognize him as a member of the New Literati Painting, and he himself said that his works did not belong to the category of literati painting, what he upheld was a huge extension of the cultural spirit that intellectuals shouldered. He believes that his paintings have not only historical character, but also synchronicity and advancement, and are painting creations with great creativity and pioneering, especially in the understanding of lines: "The abstract value of the language of lines has the meaning of cultural character". His use of lines can be seen as the integration of the Ming and Qing dynasties' brush-and-ink language system and the linear painting system of the Six Dynasties, focusing on the formation of the bone force of the lines and the formation of spiritual images and the play of lyricism. Therefore, his paintings contain the brushwork of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the law of the Tang people, and the wind gods of the Six Dynasties. He did not hesitate to spend great effort to study, put forward the concept of pen mechanics and pen sense, and systematically explained the use of pen under modern academic conditions, and made great efforts online. He believes that a line contains profound cultural connotations, and the lines of Chinese painting are first expressed in the universal geometric significance of the division of time and space. Due to the different purposes, meanings, methods, accomplishments and cultural backgrounds of the thread makers, the lines themselves have very rich cultural content. In the concept of Chinese painting, the line is not only a means of modeling, but also has an independent aesthetic content, and it is a special carrier of the author's emotions. The straight line expresses emotional characteristics such as masculinity, brightness, happiness, majesty, vigor, uprightness, and straightforwardness, while the curve is the opposite of the straight line, and the two exist as a couple. Due to the rich changes of the straight and rigid lines, they often show various aesthetic characteristics such as Yongman Yuanhong, Xiu Jin Junjian, Yongmu Broad, Jin Jian and elegant, and show the subtle changes in the spirit and emotion of the thread maker. Lines with backbone can express the rhythm of feelings, the cultivation, endowment, temperament, wisdom, etc., and have a special cultural character. And the line that is most sufficient to integrate emotions and most subtly and truly express the rich inner emotional changes and aesthetic accomplishments is the "sword spine" and "cylinder" obtained by the center with a pen:
The ancients left the sword spine garden pillar and left it to write joy and sorrow with future generations.
The spine of the sword is hidden in the pen and flies white, and the garden pillar is still wrapped in cotton and the needle is multiplied with the pen above. Lu Fengzi and Huang Binhong once said.
("For the skyscraper on the previous floor, this time to make Yao Shun talk")
This is the essence of the Chinese brush and ink language. Dong Xinbin built the foundation from under the Qin Guliu Gate, based on the fact that Fu Baoshi attached importance to the use of ink and water and ignored the use of brushes, re-mentioned the use of brushes, strengthened them on the line, strengthened their muscles and style, and made up for the shortcomings of the Jiangsu School of painting, which made an avant-garde expansion for the development of Chinese painting.
The second is the use of ink and water. Dong Xinbin's use of ink is a further expansion of the traditional method and concept of using ink, and introduces the Western concept of space, which he calls the rendering of new artistic conception and the false figurative description of space and time, that is, concrete abstraction, abstract meaning, and abstract environment. This is the integration and development of Western culture with the characteristics of high quantity, and the "quantity" of Westerners to supplement the "quality" of China, which is the exchange and positioning of Chinese and Western culture on the original basis and under the modern academic concept. The introduction of Western consciousness at the technical level is a value judgment made on the basis of fully grasping the cultural characteristics of the East and the West, which has brought positive factors to the development of modern Chinese painting.
Exploring the mystery of the language of Chinese painting, the predecessors of the painters made a successful attempt, Wu Changshuo introduced the gold and stone into the flowers and birds, Huang Binhong connected the painting style of the four kings with the qi of the seal, Zhang Daqian took the law from Dunhuang, Qi Baishi combined the literati painting tradition with folk painting, Lu Fengzi on the basis of the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Tang and Song Dynasty poems (Buddhist culture), Chen Zhifo will be the five dynasties, The two Song Dynasty and the Ming and Qing dynasties, Fu Baoshi fused the Six Dynasties and the Ming and Qing dynasties, etc., are all re-combing and transparent imagery traditions, and on the basis of the achievements of the Ming and Qing dynasties, they continue to trace back to the pre-Qin, the two Han dynasties, the Six Dynasties, the Tang and Song dynasties, forming their own distinctive and unique brush and ink language. Dong Xinbin paid close attention to their creative construction, and at the same time felt Shi Lu's program, Pan Tianshou's chapter method, Ya Ming's artistic conception of brush and ink, etc., and took them as the object of his own reference, coupled with Qin Guliu and Liu Haisuer's personal teaching, which enabled him to obtain the ability to master all kinds of martial arts in the language of Chinese painting, master the essence of Chinese painting, and form his own strong painting language. Summing up his painting experience, he said:
Xi Huawu first started with outlining the lines, and added the center method to ask him to press and suppress the ...... (Then) accumulate its ink color, and then use splashed ink, each free to indulge, and create a splash of color, into the realm of great success.
(Self-made inscription)
If the "Southern Front" is the most prominent feature of Dong Xinbin's painting language, the formation of Chongcai's painting language is another very successful breakthrough in his painting language.
Experimental recolor. He first sketched with lines, and then applied color, but many times it is directly sketched with color, dyed, and created, breaking through the difference between color and ink, and the practice of using color as ink has appeared in the Tang Dynasty, but as a technique is not common, he absorbed the traditional green landscape since the Tang Dynasty The creative techniques are used instead of ink and wash outline, and the color is used as ink, and the color language is consciously sorted out, emphasizing the control and cold abstraction of color, and has a high degree of grasp of the law, and Zhang Daqian, There is a clear difference in the randomness of splashes such as bangs. Drawing on the ancient Chinese color concept and the Western color theory, the dignified and deep mineral pigments, and the bright, gorgeous and elegant plant pigments have been vividly brought into play, which is not only different from the previous green landscapes, but also different from the color concept of impressionism.
Chinese landscape painting to the Tang Dynasty will form a heyday of the situation, especially the boneless green for the exquisite, the geomorphological color and the geological color abstract contrast, take the method of bright and simple handsome, calm and natural, Yuan Ming Dynasty this method is still transmitted, but there is no more dignified atmosphere.
(Self-made inscription)
This is a new concept of painting, which is closely related to the ancient color concepts of the East, such as the Five Elements Theory, and the Western concepts of color science and physics. Zhang Daqian, Xie Zhiliu, Liu Haisu in the fifties and sixties has been splashed on the basis of splashing ink experiments, which makes his heavy color have a prior foundation, on the basis of the previous generation of masters heavy color experience for a wide range of combing, promotion, combined with his understanding and understanding of ancient Chinese color concepts, as well as the comparative study of color concepts after Western impressionism, the conscious absorption of Western color concept consciousness and methods, and finally formed a unique understanding of the heavy color painting style:
Big green splash color: There are colorful dreams in life, last night in the Soviet Union, golden mangroves and bright sunsets, whispers on the riverside, blonde hair and blue eyes, absurd all kinds of overnight days. Suddenly made a dream, dreaming of the realm of Soviet Russia, shining golden and green trees. Shouting out this real oil painting realm. The banks of the great river are scattered, and everywhere seems to have returned to the old realm.
("For the skyscraper on the previous floor, this time to make Yao Shun talk")
It can be seen from the "color dream" made by Zi that Dong Xinbin's Chongcai has his ideological and emotional changes and breakthroughs in understanding, especially the thinking of the current political consciousness and Western cultural consciousness, which has found a suitable conceptual basis for his experimental Chongcai. The elegance and wilderness presented in the picture is indeed a successful integration of personality and culture. Of course, Dong Xinbin's experimental heavy color is far from the conceptual category of traditional painting and cannot be understood by some historians, and the conceptual categories of Chinese painting that he insists on, such as the use of lines, the emphasis on brush and ink, and artistic conception, are often unacceptable to avant-garde painters. This contradiction is further exacerbated by the experimental re-color, which puts him in a position of accusations from both sides. If it weren't for his sudden death, it might have brought about all kinds of possible endings in this regard, and it could have been subversive or constructive for the current situation of Chinese painting, and it might have been a creative breakthrough for Chinese painting. Unfortunately, his untimely death forced the interruption of this experimental work.
3. Chinese painting with modern significance
Another important feature of Dong Xinbin's paintings is the modern concept nurtured in his paintings. If the Impressionists' discovery of bright colors outdoors was a revolution in the history of Western art, the publication of Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil" set off an even greater revolutionary storm in the entire field of culture and art. The old aesthetic concept has been fissioned, and what was previously considered ugly, insignificant, or even neglected has become the object of aesthetics, and the development of human culture has entered the modern period. Although the mainland has already given birth to similar sprouts in ancient times, such as Zhuangzi's theory that decay turns into magic and miraculous repetition into decay, Fu Shan's calligraphy proposal of preferring clumsiness to cleverness, fragmentation rather than arrangement, and even ugliness as beauty, etc., are all similar germs of this thought, but they have not developed the ideological concept in the modern sense. Since the Shanghai School, there have been some corresponding changes in this aesthetic concept, such as Xugu's "Red Snake Painting" (Nanjing Museum), etc., which takes snakes and insects as the objects of description, and the creation of Chinese painting has begun to enter a new aesthetic concept. Dong Xinbin is obviously more conscious in the choice of this subject matter, he not only incorporates traditional themes such as plum, orchid, and bamboo into his paintings, but also includes objects that are not noticed or even disgusted by people. For example, steles (such themes were also found in the ancients, such as the Sui and Tang Dynasties Zheng Fashi "Reading the Tablet", the Song Dynasty "Reading the Stele and the Stone Map", etc., Dong Xinbin transformed the ancient lofty and ancient nostalgia into modern concepts, as a symbol of death and the unmet talent), fungal damp plants, fireflies, rotten grass, residual tiles, broken stones, and various characters of the lower classes who were not noticed or even humiliated and harmed, etc., were incorporated into the field of vision as the theme of creation, and so on. From the ugly and the harmed, he discovers the beauty that others do not see, and discovers the image of beauty from it, which expands the expressive theme of Chinese painting. For example, "Rotten Grass Ganoderma Mushroom" and Zheng Qi made the line hook "Ming Wadang Fragment" two pictures, the former is a line hook heavy color, the latter is a white drawing, the second picture or hook line, or color, outline the soul of the ruined things, give a very deep spiritual connotation, burst out of the lush creative aura, the beauty of its color and line, people admire, he inscribed in "Rotten Grass Ganoderma lucidum":
The morning is steaming, the Ganoderma lucidum is warm, moistens a few threads, the green grass is dewed, and it is necessary to smell the idle people passing by.
[Fu Shaodong's self-painted inscription by Dong Xinbin (1989)]
Contains the author's deep emotional sustenance.
Modern Chinese painting needs to have themes that conform to modern imagery and a modern brush and ink language. Dong Xinbin has undoubtedly made creative practice in this regard, and he has repeatedly emphasized that his painting creation is not a genre painting, but a painting with an avant-garde, pioneering nature, and forward-looking nature.
(Zhao Qibin)