"Stained Family Style: Art and Life in Li Keran's Family Letters" is being held at 111 Art Space on the Bund of Shanghai Investment Building. The exhibition focuses on the artist's letters to his children, combined with his representative works from various periods, linking his life trajectory and artistic creation.
What is special about the exhibition is that it does not simply display the artist's works, but makes full use of the letters, manuscripts, photographs and other documents treasured by his family to restore the artist's living conditions and ideological situation, and tries to understand the background and connotation of his artistic creation from a more humane perspective.
At the art salon "Letters from the Family: Reconstructing the Birth of a Classic from Historical Fragments" held on July 4th, the curators, art historians and Li Keran's family shared the causes and consequences of the birth of this exhibition. Cao Qinghui, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, pointed out that art historical research should not be limited to the works themselves, but also need more such original materials.
An exhibition with temperature
Cong Tao, the curator of this exhibition and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology of Peking University, admits that in the history of art, people have had some symbolic impressions of Li Keran, such as red landscapes and sketches, and now many exhibitions are presenting these. "How to show new ideas is the first question that comes to mind." When he sorted out the works with Li Keran's family, he found that he kept some family letters in his home, "I started to read these things, and suddenly my eyes lit up, and I found that a person, he appeared alive." ”
In Cong Tao's view, an artist who lives for a lifetime will not only leave behind works, but also many traces. These traces are related to his whole life experience, and also related to the ups and downs of the great era. Letters and other things are not for the public, but for children, for those around them, and may even be about trivial things in life, but it is precisely through these that we can see a real person who has lived.
In a general art exhibition, the audience usually receives aesthetic pleasure from a lot of works, and will see how the artist creates a new style and how he positions himself in art history. And this exhibition goes beyond the scope of ordinary art exhibitions. For Cong Tao, a great artist must also be the most outstanding, sensitive, and insightful person of that era. "In Li Keran's works and family letters, we feel the wisdom of a person, and his choices in the face of history and ups and downs are instructive to us. I hope that through these things it will resonate with everyone. ”
Traditional Chinese art pays attention to knowing people and discussing painting, what is the relationship between Li Keran's life choice and his art? Cong Tao pointed out that in the expression of Li Keran, his children and the people around him, we can see Li Keran's life character, his way of dealing with things and facing problems, which are in line with his paintings. As a result, the exhibition presents a flesh-and-blood, warm, and warm Li Keran, and Cong Tao also hopes that the audience can break through the conceptual understanding and see the real side of the artist.
Li Dongmei is the granddaughter of Li Keran and graduated from the Department of Art History of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. She admits that the preparation time for the exhibition is not long, but the brewing and origin behind it has been a long time.
Li Dongmei noticed that art historians pay special attention to the details of life, and when they see the paintings of Li Keran's first wife, Su E, they will pay attention to what the books on the table in the picture are, whether they are borrowed from the library or in foreign languages, so as to infer the state and state of mind of the creator at that time. They will restore the artist from these clues. "I think what art historians are doing is to let these art classics and artists not only live in history, but also live in our lives today, through every exhibition and every presentation, so that everyone can still be moved and inspired by their art and their spirit."
She said that in the past few decades, Li Keran's family has also continued to collect and summarize his documents. "For us, Ke Dye is not just the name in the books, he is also in our lives." She told the CBN reporter that she returned to Beijing with her father in the 1980s and experienced the final stage of her grandfather's artistic creation. In her impression, Li Keran gave him art almost all of his time, "and his children would also complain that their father got along with them too little." But when I was sorting out these letters later, I realized that he also had a lot of entanglements in his heart, and he also wanted to give the child some care as much as possible. After reading this, I will also get to know him again. ”
Art history needs more material
Cai Tao, a professor at the School of Arts and Humanities at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, noticed that a shift in the study of art history began to take place, that is, to pay more attention to documents, materials, and objects, to interpret the artist's life from the details, and then to understand his creation. He cites an exhibition recently done by Gu Zheng, a professor at Fudan University's School of Journalism, which presents the correspondence between artists Liu Haisu and Liu Kang, revealing feelings that have never been seen in classic art history, and also echoing the life atmosphere in Liu Haisu's works. He also mentioned that Cao Qinghui, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, has done many exhibitions in recent years, often looking at the artist's spiritual history from the perspective of family roles.
Cao Qinghui has been advocating "art material science" all these years. He thinks there is a problem with art museums today. For example, most of the collections of the National Art Museum of China are left through exhibitions, "what is left is the works, but only the results", and "the museum will not present anything other than the result, nor will it be consciously presented." "In this case, everyone has a habit for a long time that aesthetics is to face a painting and ask whether it is good or not, true or not.
Cao Qinghui observes that today's art market is full of expectations for works, as well as the demand for investment and value-added, and people want to know more about the stories behind the works, but art museums cannot provide a carrier to carry the story, and the carrier is basically still in the original ecology. From this point of view, he proposed that none of the collections of the National Art Museum of China is complete, "because it only needs that result, and there is no systematic and complete production process for a single work." The input that the artist has made around this result – sketches, sketches, conceived articles, where he has been, how much time he has spent there – has not reached the level of public knowledge. "This leads to the problem that if you want to do research on modern Chinese art, you can rely on libraries and art museums, and you will not get enough of it. Because the study of art history, like other historical and humanities disciplines, cannot rely on inference and deduction, but can only rely on first-hand materials.
Cao Qinghui believes that the artist's aura should be weakened and returned to society, "How he lives in the world, including his friends, his relationship with his parents, wife and children, family relationship, social relationship, teacher-teacher relationship, his thoughts and thoughts, and his entertainment activities, are all worthy of our understanding as a category." ”
He took Li Keran's letter as an example: "You don't need to read the full text, just read the letter cover, 'Comrade Li Yushuang received', you will know that this is a certain era, and you will call your son comrade at that time." After the reform and opening up, it gradually returned to the level of a person's family affection. In this exhibition hall, seeing his works and his letters, you can immediately enter the world of a person. ”
Cong Tao admits that this exhibition is indeed greatly influenced by the concept of "art material science". The exhibition site displays photos and objects, including the tape recorder that Li Keran gave to his son and the red envelope for the child, when these things are presented on the scene, the image of an artist becomes richer. In his view, interpreting artists in the way of art materials is actually constructing a new narrative mode.
Gu Zheng once revisited Su Shaoqing's former residence in Duxingli, Jinling East Road, with Li Dongmei. Li Keran's father-in-law, Su Shaoqing, is a well-known ticket holder in Shanghai, and Li Keran also lived here for a short time. Li Dongmei remembered that they climbed the narrow stairs and immersed themselves in the environment where Su Shaoqing, Su E, and Li Keran once lived. Gu Zheng took some photographs that day, and he believes that these photos can be used as materials for future research on art history and cultural history. He felt a little regretful that they didn't go into the room to take pictures of them for fear of disturbing the lives of the residents, and those digital photos now seem to have not had enough pixels, "The development of technology is changing with each passing day, and if we have the means to do so, we can record more things, maybe more valuable, or release more things in them, maybe more content to interpret." ”
The transformation in the seal of the two sides
What kind of art was needed in the 20th century? It's a question that has been going through the centuries. In Cong Tao's view, Li Keran's creation is closely related to the situation of China in the 20th century, "The times need some art that can inspire people, need some grander vision, and need some more powerful expressions from the formal level, which is the need of the entire national culture." From this point of view, Cong Tao believes that Li Keran is a real great artist, "There can be many excellent artists, and there are many varieties, the significance of a big artist who is in tune with the times lies in his insight into the times, he is in tune with the times, and he is pushed up by the times." ”
Cai Tao is more interested in Li Keran's earlier creations. Unlike the more classic Li Keran that we later understood, in the 1940s, he was mainly known for his figure paintings with ancient themes, and his use of lines was also very fluent and chic. This brings me to an interesting question: why did Li Keran, who was known for his figure painting before 1949, later become a landscape painter? How exactly did the change happen? He noticed that in the 1940s, Li Keran, Fu Baoshi, Guo Moruo and other artists and theorists gathered in Jingangpo, Chongqing. ”
In 1947, Li Keran studied under Qi Baishi in Beijing, and Cai Tao believes that this is the direction that Li Keran found for the modernization of Chinese painting after experiencing the Chongqing era. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in the 50s, he began to travel all over the country to sketch, gradually forming his own artistic style, and finally presented the country's meteorology and imagery, including the entire pathetic historical process, in the form of images, forming an unforgettable recognition.
In 1954, Li Keran created the two seals of "The Courage of the Valuable" and "The Soul of the Wanted". Cai Tao believes that these two seals show Li Keran's state of mind at that time: in the fierce political changes of the times, how to abandon the artistic achievements that he has regarded as the most precious and keep up with the changes of the new era? This used to be a huge challenge for him, but we have now seen his answer.
Each era has its own issues, and each era has its own destiny. Cao Qinghui said that Li Keran's life experience and creative process have brought us enlightenment today: we must find an art form suitable for the times and find our own way of survival.
(This article is from Yicai)