Mr. Liang Sicheng once said: At the beginning of art, sculpture comes first.
57 years ago, a young man from Sichuan named Tang Shichu came to Shanghai and willingly lived a "two-handed mud" life, leaving many classic sculptures for the city.
Recently, on the occasion of the "Imprint of the Times - Sixty Years of Tang Shichu's Sculpture Career Retrospective Exhibition", the reporter and Mr. Tang Shichu chatted about his sculpture dream in the art museum of Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute.
Monument complex
In the early morning of August 26, 1964, a riverboat soaked in the morning light and sailed into the Huangpu River. Tang Shichu stood on the deck and watched as cargo ships with various flags passed by, and the Bund complex not far away was golden in the sunlight. At the age of 22, he had a "Shanghai dream" – one day, his own sculptures could be erected in this beautiful big city.
Tang Shichu loved painting since he was a child, and he once wanted to become a "Levitan of China". After being admitted to the sculpture department of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, he quickly fell in love with this art. One summer, he set off from Chongqing with his teacher and arrived in Beijing along Chengdu, Xi'an, Xianyang, Tianshui, Luoyang, Pingyao, Taiyuan and Datong, and in the process of searching all the way, the essence of ancient Chinese sculpture was in full view, which benefited him for life.
"Although sculpture and painting have many similarities, there are still great differences between the two. Sculpture is monumental at the beginning of its birth, and it is inseparable from the development of human civilization. Tang Shichu told reporters that as early as when he was studying, he had a strong monument complex in his heart. He deeply feels that creating monumental sculptures is what a sculptor should do, and it is also the best channel and carrier for sculptors to realize their self-worth and social value.
Tang Shichu "Sit through the bottom of the prison" plaster cast
When he first arrived in Shanghai, Tang Shichu was assigned to teach at the Shanghai Arts and Crafts School, and was later transferred to the Urban Planning Office of the Shanghai Municipal Government (later renamed Shanghai Urban Planning and Design Institute). Although for a long time, sculpture did not belong to Tang Shichu's own job, he did not give up his dream of sculpture. After being transferred to the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute in 1986, he devoted himself to artistic creation.
In 1976, Tang Shichu was commissioned to design a large commemorative relief for the Baoshan Martyrs' Cemetery in Shanghai. Thousands of martyrs who died heroically for the liberation of Shanghai are buried here. "That was the first time I did a large monumental sculpture. What I want to pursue is a rough, simple, architectural, tense style. "The 20-meter-wide and 2.5-meter-high "Battle victory" thus laid the foundation for the style of Tang Shichu's monumental sculpture.
In 1984, Tang Shichu's call for papers for the Longhua Martyrs' Cemetery, "Sit on the Bottom of the Prison", is a monumental sculpture with great inner tension and visual shock. Tang Shichu used the form of deep relief to bend the revolutionary in a narrow space, unable to straighten even his neck, in order to imply that the revolutionary was in prison. He absorbed the relatively simple stylistic characteristics of Western modern sculpture, focusing on structure and formality, and successfully created the image of a strong-willed revolutionary.
If "Sit on the Bottom of the Prison" is more about bringing visual shock to the audience with the bending of the body, then in "Longtan Sanjie", which was created in 2000, the three characters are like being imprisoned in the dark, revealing only three heads with determined eyes.
Fu Jun, curator of the exhibition and deputy director of the Art Museum of the Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute, believes that unlike "Sit on the Bottom of the Prison" which is purely based on artistic imagination, "Three Masters of Longtan" is an artistic re-creation of real historical figures - Li Kenong, Qian Zhuangfei and Hu Di, three central intelligence officers of the CPC Central Committee. From the creation of this real historical theme, it can be seen that only by establishing a real feeling for history, understanding history, and understanding the characters in history can the sculptor create flesh and blood, rather than conceptual works.
Tang Shichu in front of the work "Black Hole"
Shape life
An excellent portrait sculpture, like a biography of a person.
Tang Shichu and Mr. Ba Jin are fellow countrymen, and when he was in middle school, he often passed by Ba Jin's old house. In the impression, there is a black door and a pair of stone lions at the door of the old house that is closed all year round. In his later years, Ba Jin shouted "tell the truth" in the "Caprice Record", and Tang Shichu solemnly respected it after reading it, and wanted to make a statue of Ba Jin. However, at that time, Ba Jin rarely appeared in public due to physical reasons, and no longer accepted visits. Coincidentally, Tang Shichu's friends provided him with a set of precious Ba Jin life photos, through which Tang Shichu repeatedly pondered the charm of Ba Lao and completed the tribute to Ba Jin.
The book "No Lies – A Tribute to The Late Barkin" was completed in 1995. Tang Shichu consciously narrowed Ba Jin's eyes slightly, and looked forward thoughtfully. In order to let people see his distressed and wise and deep gaze, he adopted a unique treatment of imagery for the glasses on the bridge of his nose, retaining only the main frame and structure of the glasses, leaving the lenses completely blank. The treatment of the mouth is also very special: Ba Lao's mouth is slightly open, as if he has something to say, and as if he is in a state of introspection and reflection. Through this small statue, Tang Shichu strives to condense and summarize Ba Jin's ups and downs in life experience, as well as his thoughts and spirit. More than twenty years later, today it seems that this portrait sculpture still has a deeply moving charm.
Tang Shichu "Don't Tell a Lie - A Tribute to The Late Ba Jin" Bronze
In addition to Ba Jin, Tang Shichu has also made sculptures for many great people and celebrities, such as Deng Xiaoping, Zhu De, Song Qingling, Huang Xing, Tao Xingzhi, Hu Yuzhi, Liu Haisu, Einstein, etc.
He not only made portraits of famous people, but also sculptured ordinary people, and also created statues of characters in literature.
Kong Yiji, collected by the Lu Xun Memorial Hall in Shanghai, is the first literary figure in Tang Shichu's sculpture. His kong Yiji eyes stared straight upwards, his eyes hollow, wrinkles deep and deep, with a look of shock and trepidation. At this time, he was broken by Ding Juren, crawled on the ground to the counter, raised his head, and asked the counter guy for a bowl of wine in a weak voice. That faint and hoarse voice seemed to be a thunderclap in Tang Shichu's heart, and what he focused on shaping was Kong Yiji's expression at the moment he opened his mouth. In order to make the audience's attention focus on the face, he also consciously discarded the back of Kong Yiji's head, thus strongly and vividly revealing Kong Yiji's chaotic, dazed, and helpless inner world and mental state.
Stainless steel sculpture "Bond" in the Pudong section of Nanpu Bridge
Get out of "innovation anxiety"
In his nearly 60-year career, Tang Shichu has created nearly 100 portrait sculptures. "How can you carve out a person's spirit?" The reporter asked. "First of all, we must look at the bone, but also carefully observe the eyes, eye sockets, lips, chin... All the details on a person's face are speaking. In addition to observing static, master dynamics. To know how a person's expression changes and how to change his movements, you need to understand some anatomical knowledge. Tang Shichu replied.
In Fu Jun's view, Tang Shichu deeply understood the experience and state of mind of each object, found the traces of the heart through the appearance, and then grasped the image characteristics of the essence of the character, and finally showed the spiritual temperament and ideological connotation of the object. "His sculptures often contain a deep humanistic concern. Whether it is sympathy for Kong Yiji, respect for Ba Jin, or concern for the father of the Red Army soldier, it reflects his maintenance and pursuit of human dignity, destiny and value, which is a noble mind, literacy and interest, and also the humanistic background of an artist to create excellent works. ”
Tang Shichu believes that as long as the audience appreciates, the works will naturally shine. "If you ask me if my dream of being a sculptor 60 years ago and the dream of Shanghai 57 years ago are fulfilled, I think it is probably counted." Many of the classic sculptures in shanghai are from the hands of Tang Shichu: the stainless steel abstract sculpture "Bond" in the Pudong section of the Nanpu Bridge, the "Huang Xing Statue" in Huangxing Park, the "Marx and Engels" in the Party School of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, the "Einstein Statue" in Zhangjiang, Pudong, the "Liu Haisu Statue" in front of the Liu Haisu Art Museum, and the "Shadow Soul - Xie Jin" in front of the Shanghai Film Museum.
Tang Shichu, Yu Jiyong and Zeng Lufu collaborated on "Marx and Engels" (established at the Party School of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China)
Once, when Tang Shichu was on a business trip to a foreign country, a soldier on the train asked, "What profession are you engaged in?" Look at your temperament like a professor, but look at your hands like a working person. Tang Shichu smiled, "I am a working person." "His hands, which have been dealing with mud for nearly 60 years, have become thick and thick, and his knuckles are deformed, and he can't even hold a fist." I have an architect friend who claims to be a mason, so aren't we the sculptors? Tang Shichu said.
Today, Tang Shichu, who is nearly eighty years old, has been looking forward to the sculpture art to further enter people's lives. In the face of the increasing number of abstract sculptures at present, he said: "Our generation of sculptors pay attention to shaping, use materials to serve modeling, and pay attention to hand kung fu. Today's sculptors pay more attention to abstraction, pay attention to the beauty of the material itself, and achieve the ultimate in formal beauty, which is a kind of progress. However, artistic creation should avoid falling into a kind of 'innovation anxiety'. Art needs innovation, it needs boldness and 'thick skin', but it cannot innovate for the sake of innovation. This involves the origin of art, the relationship between art and people. He always believed that art is a language, an expression of sincerity in the heart.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Text Editor: Chen Junjun Caption Source: Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute
Source: Author: Chen Junjun