Mother's Day is just one day in May,
Mother's love is year after year.
It spans the dust of the years,
Grow up with us.
It travels through thousands of years of time and space,
亘古不变。
Dante said, "There is one of the most beautiful voices in the world, and that is the call of a mother." "For thousands of years, mothers have been the eternal theme of writers and artists, and they are also the most tender requiem in their hearts. At China Guardian's 2024 Spring Auctions, there are also quite a few artworks related to this theme. In addition to marveling at the artist's mastery of the artist, the story behind the work is even more moving.
Lot 273
Wu Guanzhong Pastoral House
Oil on canvas, 1992, 60×73 cm, China Guardian Spring Auction 2024
In 1992, Wu Guanzhong visited London for the second time, came to the English countryside to sketch, and after returning to China, he created seven oil paintings on the theme of the British countryside, and "Pastoral House" is one of them. Although the work depicts the English countryside, it is more Chinese in color and atmosphere, reminiscent of Wu Guanzhong's famous "Jiangnan Water Town" series, which conveys the artist's infinite sentimentality and memories of the Jiangnan landscape: in another country, in search of hometown, in search of childhood.
Wu Guanzhong once wrote: "I am the eldest son, and she (my mother) is particularly fond of it, and she personally breastfeeds until she is more than four years old. After she gave birth to children in a row, she had no milk, so she could only find a wet nurse, and I was the only son she fed by herself, so I was very pampered. Pampered and favored, I have a prominent position in the younger siblings, but she doesn't care about the dissatisfaction of her siblings or the criticism of her neighbors. ”
As his mother's favorite child, his mother's aesthetic has had a profound impact on him since he was a child. "My mother's clothes always look good, and she is good at matching colors. My aunts and sisters-in-law made new clothes and listened to her ideas, and my cousins lived in our house before they got married, and their mothers taught embroidery. She knitted a variegated sweater for me with all kinds of bits and pieces, knitted and dismantled, unknitted, and finally knitted into a chic and beautiful sweater after countless knittings, and my first sweater was an artistic production she put a lot of effort into it. "The line in the mother's hand, the wanderer's shirt. This sweater not only became Wu Guanzhong's initial aesthetic enlightenment, but also became his permanent remembrance, and many of his works express nostalgia for the old home where his mother is still there.
Lot 3416
Zhou Sicong Autumn sketches
Mirror Heart, ink and color on paper, 98.5×103 cm, 癸海 (1983), China Guardian Spring Auction 2024
"Autumn Sketch" is the most representative work of Zhou Sicong's modern character style, and "Made at Sunrise, Resting at Sunset" is a sister chapter to each other, shining in the art world. The work uses a wide-angle vision to create the image of Yi women, showing the beauty of women's labor and the light of maternal love, and expressing the painter's deep concern and nostalgia for female laborers who silently endure fate and are willing to endure the hardships of life.
Zhou Sicong once talked about her mother, a mother who was educated, but dedicated all her efforts to her husband and children, and silently endured the hardships of life, so that she was consumed prematurely and passed away quietly. Later, her life actually unconsciously repeated her mother's trajectory. First of all, in the early years, Zhou Sicong's father was sick and needed to be taken care of, Lu Shen's mother also lived with them, Lu Shen, who was good at art research, was not good at family affairs, the two children were still very young, and Zhou Sicong was responsible for all the family affairs, and he washed clothes in the yard with cold water in winter. As Lu Shen contracted hepatitis, Zhou Sicong began to bear more difficult family and mental burdens, and later she herself contracted rheumatoid disease and died young at the age of 57.
Chinese art critic Lang Shaojun believes that Zhou Sicong uses Yi women to express her own heavy experience of being a woman. This "Autumn Sketch" contains love, compassion, pain, reverence, regret, and sigh, which can only be experienced by the attentive viewer.
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Lot 3762
Pu Ru stabbed the blood of the ancestors and wrote the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
Paper 1 volume and 1 frame1939 manuscript handscroll full length: 369.8×31.5 cmPu Ru Heart Sutra 1st paragraph: 119.5×31.5 cmPu Ru Heart Sutra 2nd paragraph: 57.5×31.5 cmChina Guardian Spring Auction 2024
This volume of "Heart Sutra" was written by Pu Ru's biological mother, Mrs. Xiang Tai, in 1939, and was later given to Ma Shiliang to support Ma Jia's mother-in-law, who died young. Pu Ru's biological mother, Xiang, was his father's concubine. Pu Ru believes in Buddhism, his mother is filial piety, Mrs. Xiang passed away in 1937, in order to treat the funeral of his mother according to the ancestral rites, he did not hesitate to sell the "Pingfu Post" that he treasured for half his life to Zhang Boju. Because of the Buddhist culture has the saying that "peeling the skin into paper, princing blood into ink, and burning fingers into lamps", he made a vow to prick blood into ink and write scriptures. Pu Ru cherished his thoughts for his biological mother, stabbed the blood book Heart Sutra, chased eternal admiration, prayed for the blessing of the underworld, and the piety and persistence revealed between the lines were moving.
Through the stories behind these artworks, we may be able to better understand the meaning of collecting. In addition to the cultural value and academic value of the work itself, what we collect is an unforgettable memory and a heavy emotion. When you become the inheritor of a work of art, you have an emotional resonance with the creator across time and space, and become a watchman of the same history.
On Mother's Day, let's say in the name of art:
Thanksgiving Mother!
Mother's love is eternal!
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