【Everyone】
Author: Qian Niansun (Former Chairman of Anhui Literary and Art Critics Association, Researcher of Anhui Academy of Social Sciences, Special Researcher of Anhui Provincial Research Center for Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics)
Biography of scholars
Wu Zuoren (1908-1997), originally from Xuanchengjing County, Anhui Province, was born in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Painter and art educator. In 1926, he entered the Department of Architecture of Suzhou Industrial College, and later studied at Shanghai University of the Arts, Nanguo Art College, and Central University, under the tutelage of Xu Beihong. In 1930, he was admitted to the École d'Arte école Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and later transferred to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium. In 1935, he returned to China and became a lecturer in the Art Department of Chuo University. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he served as a director of the All-China Anti-Enemy Association and the China Art Association. In 1946, he became a professor and provost of the Oil Painting Department of Peking Art College. After the founding of New China, he served as a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He was the president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the chairman of the China Artists Association. He has published albums such as "Selected Paintings of Wu Zuoren" and "Collection of Ink Paintings of Wu Zuoren", and authored "Selected Paintings of Wu Zuoren".
Mr. Wu Zuoren is an important participant and promoter of the development of Chinese art in the 20th century. He not only served as the president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts for a long time since the 1950s, but also served as the chairman of the China Artists Association from the 1980s to the 1990s, directly planning and organizing many major issues in the work of the Art Education and The Art Association; moreover, with his outstanding creative achievements and distinctive personality style, he has set up a cultural benchmark in the contemporary Chinese painting world that has both a deep traditional heritage and a strong spirit of the times, and has accumulated valuable experience for exploring how Chinese art can travel forward based on the basis of national culture and absorb the excellence of foreign art.
"Knowing White and Guarding Black" is painted by Wu Zuoren
"Tibetan Plains Grazing" by Wu Zuoren
Journey to the Northwest: From oil painting to Chinese painting
Wu Zuoren's fine art creation has made outstanding achievements in both oil painting and Chinese painting. Before the 1950s, he mainly painted oil paintings, leaving behind many classic oil painting masterpieces; after the 1950s, although some new oil paintings were launched, they were more immersed in Chinese painting. Throughout the development of Chinese art in the past hundred years, many famous painters have experienced the evolution process from painting oil painting in the early days to turning to the creation of Chinese painting in the middle and late years. If it can be said that Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian, Liu Haisu, etc. were the first generation of outstanding attempters who transferred from oil painting to Chinese painting, then Wu Zuoren struggled to open up along the path created by Xu Beihong and others to aid the West into China, and was an outstanding representative of the second generation from oil painting to Chinese painting creation.
Wu Zuoren followed Xu Beihong in his early years, and in the late 1920s he studied in the Fine Arts Department of the Southern Kingdom Art Academy where Xu Beihong taught, and the Art Department of Central University. In the spring of 1930, with the encouragement and help of Xu Beihong, he was admitted to the École Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and later transferred to the studio of Professor Bastian, president of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium. During his studies in Belgium, he won the first place in the examination of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts for his oil painting "Man's Body", and won the gold medal and the honor of Laurel, which shows his deep study of oil painting and the solid foundation of Western painting. The oil paintings he created at this stage, such as "Cossack Soldier", "Tracker", "Controversy", "Portrait of Li Na", etc., have the style of typical Western European traditional realist oil paintings, showing a solid sketching foundation and the ability to use color. In the autumn of 1935, at the invitation of Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren bid farewell to Professor Bastian and returned to Nanjing to serve as a lecturer in the Art Department of Central University. Soon, he and another art lecturer, Lu Sibai, and Liu Kaiqu, a professor at Hangzhou Art College, jointly held a painting exhibition at Central University and began to emerge in the art world. In the spring of 1937, he was selected for the Second National Art Exhibition with "Out of the Kiln" and "Wind and Clouds on Xuanwu Lake", and was elected as a director of the Chinese Art Association.
From April 1943 to February 1945, Wu Zuoren spent nearly two years to experience life and sketch in Gansu, Qinghai, Xikang and other places. He visited the mausoleum of Genghis Khan, toured the Taal Temple, went deep into the Yumen oil field, observed the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and copied the masterpieces of the murals, and reached Qinling, Kangding, Yushu, Ganzi and other places. The vast, majestic, robust and simple customs and customs of the west amazed him and made him excited. In addition to creating a large number of works such as "Sacrifice to Qinghai", "Spinning Sand on the Desert", "Ganzi Snow Mountain", "Negative Water Girl", "Yumen Oil Mine" and so on, he held several sketch exhibitions along the way, and also gave many poems with profound traditional poetry skills. Please see his "1943 Visit to the West of the River to Visit the Mogao Caves Is Not Grass":
The sun shot nine times, and Changlin Xiao moved the golden wind.
Yun Jiao throated the essence of the house, and robbed the top secret palace.
Thousands of years of divine work depended on the broken wall, and the ten thousand niches were disguised without autumn puffs.
Successive dynasties have lost their way to open the border and want to strike Danqing to try to lead the bow.
This seven laws not only depict the scene of the Mogao Grottoes, but also express the author's lament for the country's tribulations, the vicissitudes of the world, and his own desire to abandon his pen and serve the motherland ("want to strike Danqing and try to lead the bow").
The trip to the northwest had an important impact on Wu Zuoren's formation of his own unique artistic style, including the later transition from oil painting to Chinese painting. In his later years, he said in his memoir "Art Sea Endless Hardship": "The arduous journey not only tempered my will, but also tempered my brush. This kind of honing of the brush is mainly reflected in the obvious changes in its creative style. Comparing his oil painting "Hauler", which he made when he studied in Belgium in 1932, with the oil painting "Negative Water Girl" made on this trip to the northwest, it is also a depiction of wild people, but the style is very different: the latter is obviously brighter in color, the lines are lighter and smoother, and the almost flat color blocks are used more; the subtle and deep light color of Northern Europe is replaced by the strong light of the northwest plateau of China, and with the weakening of the Flemish school factors, the pursuit of concise and general traditional Chinese painting charm is significantly enhanced. Whether it is oil painting or watercolor and sketching, whether it is a character, landscape or theme creation, the use of lines in his works since then has increased significantly, the color of thin painting is more flexible, the overall sense of the picture is stronger, and the charm is more exquisite. In the article "Wu Zuoren Painting Exhibition" that year, Xu Beihong talked about the harvest of his northwest sketching: "The works are rich, but the style has also changed, the brilliance is radiant, and the procession is free. This not only affirms the improvement and progress of his "style of work", but also highly expects that he is the hope of the "Chinese Renaissance".
The peak of Wu Zuoren's oil painting creation was in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition to "Negative Water Girl", "Grassland Cloud And Rain", "Jingpo Lake", "Sun Yat-sen and Li Dazhao", etc., "Sanmenxia" and "Qi Bai Stone Statue" can be called masterpieces. "Sanmenxia" is not large, but the field of view is grand, the scene is huge, the rushing Yellow River crosses the lofty mountains and mountains, the magnificent landscape of boulders or lying or standing in the rapids, and the busy scene of supporting and crowded construction of hydropower stations on the shore and island and reef construction sites, showing both aesthetic rhythm and artistic appeal, and full of high construction enthusiasm and praise for life, which can be said to be a model of the perfect combination of landscape painting and theme creation. "Qi Bai Stone Statue" is deeply rooted in the key to "writing God in shape" in ancient Chinese painting theory, and the elderly sit in a serene and solemn posture, forming a stable, thick and simple composition; dark blue cotton robe, black soft velvet hat and gray tone background, setting off the old painter's warm colored crane hair and childlike face, making the characters look energetic and extraordinary; especially the portrayal of details such as keen and deep eyes, lips accustomed to sucking pens and right hand pen gestures, highlighting the professional characteristics of a generation of art masters and the spirit of integrating art into life and striving for excellence in art. The success of "Qi Bai Stone Statue" is of course due to the author's comprehensive literacy and exquisite artistic expression ability in many aspects, but paying attention to absorbing the nutrition of Chinese painting and expressing the aesthetic taste of the nation is the reason that cannot be ignored. Zamohikin, curator of the Pushkin Museum of Plastic Arts in the Soviet Union and an art connoisseur, saw the painting at the time, praising it as comparable to Repin's famous "Statue of Tolstoy", and on the other hand, pointing out that his oil paintings "are viewed from the perspective of Chinese, like Chinese paintings, simple and poetic." This point shows an important feature of Wu Zuoren's oil painting creation, that is, he has made valuable explorations and achieved gratifying results on the road of oil painting nationalization.
The quest for the nationalization of oil painting also led him to think about the relationship between the tools of expression and the objects of expression. On the one hand, he believes that Chinese painting mainly uses ink, more use of lines to outline the image, oil painting mainly uses oil paint, more use of chiaroscuro to shape objects, the tools and techniques of the two are different, but "whether it is Chinese painting or oil painting, the work is different"; on the other hand, he feels that "the expression of Chinese painting is the most suitable for the ideological feelings of Chinese, which is the national and unique aesthetic style and aesthetic concept formed under specific cultural conditions for many years." Explaining the reasons for the shift from oil painting to Chinese painting, he said: "I myself feel that in terms of the refinement and trade-off of shapes, I am now adopting this chinese painting method that I have achieved more than in oil painting. I myself feel that using traditional Chinese tool techniques to express myself is more able to meet the requirements of my own artistic creation. It is precisely in this way that Wu Zuoren has been painting oil painting since the 1950s, while constantly trying to create Chinese painting, until the 1960s, especially after the 1970s, oil painting was only an occasional one, and Chinese painting gradually became his main project. After he returned to the tradition and specialized in Chinese painting, not only did he frequently produce masterpieces of Chinese painting on various subjects, but also won widespread attention and praise from the art world and all walks of life with his distinct creative personality and unique artistic style.
Expanding the territory: injecting new ideas into Chinese painting
Wu Zuoren's Chinese painting creation is not the same, and he is unique in his hand: whether in the choice of the expression object or in the forging of the painting language, he has used his wisdom and insight to embark on a unique path that is both different from the ancients and different from the present, and is both full of personality and the spirit of the times.
From the perspective of the object of expression, the yaks, camels, pandas, etc. he painted more were not painted in Chinese painting before or rarely dabbled in, which reflects that at the beginning of his entry into the Chinese Painting Garden, he was determined not to follow the old road that others had taken but to find another way, to create a new image and bring new interest to the painting world. Some of the works express objects such as eagle falcons, goldfish, pigeons, etc., although they have been depicted, he presents them with his own composition, image and pen and ink, which also gives people a refreshing aesthetic enjoyment.
Being able to do this is inseparable from his sober sense of innovation and pursuit of personality. He believes that an artist can be "selfless" in his outlook on life and can follow the trend in his daily life; but in his artistic outlook, he must "have me", and artistic creation must have its own things, that is, it is self-explanatory, unique, and self-contained, and must present its own appearance with some originality. There is only "me" in artistic creation, even if it is in the same era, the subject matter is similar, and the expression methods are similar, different artists can also "have different interests and do their best". How to do "have me"? The painter must not only find his own object of expression, but also convey and convey his thoughts and emotions in the object. In this regard, Wu Zuoren took the painting of camels as an example and talked about his own experience:
In comparison, I paint mostly things that the ancients painted less. I haven't seen many camels drawn. As far as I know, the camel has its own unique character. The camel on the Gobi Desert can carry a heavy load and go far, not afraid of hardships, unlike the yak, which is as strong and violent as the yak, it is moving forward step by step. Its shape is also very distinctive, from the head, neck, hump to the legs, giving people a strong and heavy feeling. Especially when the cold day falls, it grows new hair, and it stands in the sand dunes or walks on the Gobi Desert in groups, which makes people feel so excited that they can't help but experience an extraordinary power... In terms of the animal itself, this is its characteristic; for man, it can lead man to a realm of struggle with the environment, a realm of poetry, music, and painting. One has to learn from it. So I love to paint camels, just to fully express the painting situation that arises from such a personality. ("Guests Have Questions - Talking about the Creation of Teachers and Conquering Heavenly Works")
The reason why Wu Zuoren's Chinese painting works give people a novel sense of "willow dark flowers and bright villages" is not only that he has expanded the territory of traditional Chinese painting and created a series of new images such as camels, yaks, pandas, etc., but also because he has deeply observed, studied and understood these animals, captured a certain active life spirit that is connected with human nature, and injected his own unique feelings and ideological feelings into the artistic image. As he himself said, he did not paint animals to express the breed, not to engage in animal history and make maps, but to "rely on things and words" to express his thoughts and feelings. The camels he painted, whether it was "A Thousand Journeys with Heavy Tasks" in the 50s or "A Thousand Miles of Extreme Eyes" in the 1970s, all of them contained the beautiful feelings of perseverance and heavy travel. This is not only the revelation and expression of the characteristics of the camel itself, but also the portrayal and praise of the Chinese nation's spirit of constantly trekking forward through hardships.
Fundamentally, painting is nothing more than solving the problem of "what to paint" and "how to paint". In addition to not falling behind in what he paints, Wu Zuoren is also diligent in how to paint, which is different. Unlike ordinary Chinese painters, he turned to Chinese painting creation when he achieved a high degree of attainment in Western painting and had a high status in the painting world (as the president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts). At this time, he not only had a deep accumulation and profound understanding of the art of painting itself, but also had more consideration and preparation for how to run a horse in the wilderness of Chinese painting with great masters.
From the perspective of "how to paint", the most noteworthy feature of Wu Zuoren's Chinese painting creation is "simple and elegant". The so-called "simplicity" is a concise summary, to cure the complicated, and to win "a little" over "more". The so-called "Ya" is the formal elegance, as Zheng Xuan's "Notes on zhou li" said: "Ya, Zhengye, the righteous of ancient and modern times, thinks that the law of the hereafter." He talked about the creation of Chinese paintings and said:
I think that the good of the artwork should be complete, can fully express the content through concise images, and express the fullest feelings in the most concise language. The excellent tradition of Chinese art is characterized by the full transmission of charm in conciseness, the lack of pen and ink and the full artistic conception. Full is not equal to cumbersome, concise is not simple. Unlimited processing is not good. ("In China Painting Creation Group On the Portrait of Figure Painting")
In "On the Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Painting", he once compared Lang Shining's painting of trees with Qi Baishi's paintings: "Painting trees is not to carefully depict nature with a brush, but to be able to outline the demeanor of the tree in a few strokes and write the character of the tree." The Italian Lang Shining also painted Chinese paintings, painting each branch and leaf very thoroughly, and the painting was stupid. "Shiraishi paintings of residual lotuses are often deliberately conceived of the layout of the lotus stalks, so the lotus leaves of the lotus stalks are staggered, more but not chaotic, less and not monotonous, and the pen is vigorous and straight." He summed up the reasons for the success of Xu Beihong's Chinese paintings: "To strengthen the expressiveness, we must make bold trade-offs; in order to attract people, we need to leave room for the audience." The words are concise and concise, the pen is not enough and the rhyme is overflowing, although the strings are absolutely silent and lingering, but 'at this time, silence is better than sound', but it is the enrichment of art. This makes us realize that engaging in artistic production does not seek 'refinement' with infinite processing, and endlessly portrays it to the 'truth'. Understatement, ink full of pen, indulgence, the same can be called divine work. "Wu Zuoren often paints yaks, etc., and the picture processing is mostly extremely brief. For example, in the famous work "Tibetan Pastoral Grazing", although the four ben yaks are in the center of the close-up scene, they are highly generalized, and there are almost no details to depict, and the brush is used in ink to smoothly and clean up, and the yak running posture and spatial level are just right. The herders and cattle in the distance, etc., are understated and pushed far away, the picture is extremely broad, but the main body is prominent, which can be described as a total of one thousand, with a macro to extract the essence, concise and concise, and the realm is broad. Wu Zuoren said: "I paint the yak not focusing on its specific form, but mainly on its character, its powerful posture, and its rapid speed. You don't have to carefully describe how long its eyes and horns are. Those questions also need to be known, ignorance is not enough, but the expressiveness of art is not to give out all your knowledge... I paint this way in order to reflect a powerful movement, but also a strong artistic realm, so that people can see and feel a kind of driving force, so as to resonate. ”
Wu Zuoren's Chinese paintings are simple in form, often elegant and subtle, with profound meanings, and even full of speculative philosophies. For example, he painted a number of works with pigeons as the theme, one of which is called "Knowing White and Guarding Black", the picture is only one black and one white, two pigeons on one side and one side, one side, one side, two pigeons, placed in the middle and lower parts, the rest of the part is largely blank, and the upper left corner is inscribed with the title of the seal book and the book drop. "Knowing white and guarding black" said from Lao Tzu: "Knowing its whiteness, keeping its black, is the style of the world." The original meaning expresses the ancient Taoist attitude of doing nothing in the world, that is, although it is known and understood, it should be kept silent, which is the pattern that everyone should follow. Later, literati calligraphers and painters applied it to painting theory and book theory, referring to the formal laws of virtual reality complementing each other, and black and white opposite each other. With its exceptionally concise and clear composition and image, this work vividly interprets the mysterious dialectical idea of chinese painting and calligraphy that counts white and black and black and white, and even expresses the philosophy of whether there is a mutual birth and that gains and losses follow each other. Some of Wu Zuoren's Chinese paintings, the picture is simple and refined, not only has a strong sense of form, but also contains rich ideological connotations, reading to give people a pleasant and wise aesthetic interest.
The key to such artistic achievements lies in his great emphasis on the "intention" of his works, that is, the "intention to write first" as said by traditional Chinese painting theory. He once stressed that "it is not enough to talk about the art of painting without first establishing the intention". If an artistic creation is not subjectively willed, it is bound to have no essentials. Painting needs to "choose", but what to take, what to give, the key is still "can be determined to know the trade-off". In this regard, Wu Zuoren is not only a master with comprehensive skills and superb painting skills, but also a master who is diligent in thinking, good at intention, and good at expressing profound and rich ideas in a refined painting language.
Connecting East and West: The next stroke is the shape
The development of Chinese art in the past hundred years is inseparable from the background of "the west wind is gradually moving east" and "the collision between China and the West". Many artists hope to leave their own footprints and erect their own monuments on the artistic journey of connecting China and the West and integrating ancient and modern, but there are very few who can truly achieve their wishes. In addition to many attempts and achievements on the road of nationalization of oil painting, Wu Zuoren's art practice has left valuable exploration and valuable experience in how to absorb the advantages of Western art to enhance the expressiveness and sense of form of Chinese painting, and how to view Chinese brush and ink.
Wu Zuoren greatly appreciated the two ancient sayings of "master's creation" and "heaven-conquering work", and believed that combining these two sentences could better answer the question of the relationship between objective and subjective in artistic creation. Creation and Heavenly Works both refer to the natural image of the outside world, and can also be said to be the expressive objects of the work. "Master" is to grasp the form and structure of natural objects, to understand the inner characteristics and meaning of their images; "to seize" is to surpass it in order to express the higher artistic realm that you want. He pointed out: "If we only know the 'creation of teachers' and do not know the 'work of conquering heaven', we must go to an extreme, that is, to be a slave to nature." If we only know that we have the foundation of 'mastery and creation', we will go to the other extreme, that is, to the end of the non-image. Although Wu Zuoren emphasizes "seizing the heavens", he does not encourage arbitrary behavior that deviates from the image, but advocates processing, refining, exaggeration, and deformation under the premise of respecting the natural form of the objective object, so as to achieve the purpose of more typical and concentrated expression of the object.
To this end, he put forward a very noteworthy point of view on the issue of brush and ink in Chinese painting, that is, "the next stroke is the modeling". He said: "The brush and ink of Chinese painting is very clever, and the clever brush is the shape. "Of course, Chinese painting is divided into freehand and brushwork. There are certain steps in the brush painting, such as drawing, drawing lines, light ink, flower blue rendering, coloring, etc., which are some craftsmanship creations. "Freehand painting is different, the next stroke is the shape, and every time you put down the pen, you can't repeat it." He took his personal experience as an example and said: "For example, when painting a panda, two black eyes should be studied, not too square, too round, not too average, too heavy." The ears are also non-pointed and non-round, and calligraphy is used entirely. One stroke down, the shape naturally comes out. "He paints goldfish, whether it is the head, body of the fish, or the tail of the fish, it is all a stroke, both accurate and vivid forms, and the interest of pen and ink changes." Others, such as yaks, camels, pandas, pigeons, falcons, etc., all impress people with their vivid images and positive and gentle connotations, while also using ink to full of ink, the beauty of thick and dry ink changes and their rich expressiveness, intriguing to chew and play.
Wu Zuoren's wisdom and practice of "the next stroke is modeling" in freehand Chinese painting has made some biases in the process of Kuangzheng Chinese painting transformation and promoted the healthy development of Chinese painting art, at least in two aspects.
First, the correction of the literati painting ignored the shape. Chinese painting evolved into the Song Dynasty, literati painting quietly emerged, and by the Ming and Qing dynasties, it had become a grand view, and the momentum of contemporary times was still unabated. Literati painters have always been divided into two categories: one is the "skill-type" painters who attach importance to learning and cultivating feelings, and pay attention to techniques and models; the other is the "Yibi type" painters who emphasize expressive spirit and despise techniques and models. It is reasonable to say that the former is more comprehensive and should be more respected; in fact, the latter is often raised higher, so that its shortcomings such as light and thin painting techniques and modeling are often ignored or even ignored. For example, chen Hengke's influential article "The Value of Literati Painting" said: "What is literati painting? That is, the painting has the nature of a literati, contains the interest of a literati, and does not examine the artistic efforts in the painting, and must see the feelings of many literati outside the painting. The so-called literati paintings. Here, "not studying artistic skills in painting", looking at the characteristics of the composer's painting, naturally promotes the emergence of those who are sloppy in skill, light and thin shapes, arbitrary smearing, ugly as energy, and absurdity as beauty. Wu Zuoren proposed that "the next stroke is modeling", which combines the fun of brush and ink in freehand Chinese painting with the skill of modeling, which is not only in line with the reality of Chinese painting creation, including literati painting, but also has no shortage of corrective effects on some literati paintings that ignore the shortcomings of painting techniques and modeling, which is of positive significance to the healthy development of Chinese painting.
Second, the enlightenment of the Chinese brush and ink controversy. Pen and ink is an old topic in Chinese painting theory: in the "Six Laws" proposed by the Sheikh of the Southern Dynasty, it is said that "bone method uses pen"; the great painter Jing Haochuang of the late Tang Dynasty said "six points", which directly expounded the concept of "pen and ink"; since then, "pen and ink" has gradually become synonymous with Chinese painting techniques, and has also become an important criterion for evaluating the quality of a Chinese painting. In modern times, the west wind is gradually moving east, how can traditional Chinese painting innovate and develop? What is the value of pen and ink in Chinese painting? Discussions have been going on and on and on. A few years ago, Wu Guanzhong published an article with the title of "Pen and Ink Equals Zero", which basically negated the independent value of pen and ink. Zhang Tong launched "Keeping the Bottom Line of Chinese Painting", affirming the importance of pen and ink, and borrowing Huang Binhong's words: "There is no other pen and ink in Chinese painting". In fact, isolated denial or affirmation of "pen and ink" is inevitably biased. Wu Zuoren's "the next stroke is the modeling" can be described as a broken phrase, which not only clarifies the basic role of Chinese brush and ink in shaping the image and constituting the picture, but also includes the appreciation and admiration of the formal beauty of the pen and ink skill and skill. He pointed out with his own personal experience that "the brush and ink of Chinese painting have a high degree of expressiveness", but the beauty of pen and ink "is not easy, it is not easy to come by hand, or it seems to be easy to come by hand, but it is actually obtained after a long period of hard practice".
Therefore, he particularly emphasized: "I am very much in favor of writing braille, seal, affiliation, kai, grass are all OK, basically seal, affiliation, seal, subordination must be the center forward, Yan Ti Kai is also a multi-use center, the center itself contains implicit power." "Every stroke of Chinese calligraphy is shaped under exercise, which is also a prerequisite for the pen shape under Chinese painting." If there is no basic calligraphy skill, many shapes such as shrimp and birds painted by Qi Baishi cannot be vividly presented in a few strokes, but will only be drawn in a gourd, which will inevitably be stiff and stiff, and it is impossible to achieve vivid charm. After Wu Zuoren turned to the creation of Chinese painting, he did not quit every day, and worked the seal, kai, and xing, combining the solemn and majestic momentum of the seal book with the lively and flexible manners of the book, and changing his own style of being strong and soft in the line from the seal to the bone in the show. In the system of traditional Chinese culture, calligraphy and painting are both homologous and the same. The in-depth study of calligraphy not only helps to improve the brush modeling skills under freehand Chinese painting, but also pays attention to the overall effect, black and white treatment, dense relationship, and the change of the knot body of the word, which has enlightening significance for the craftsmanship of the picture. Some of his paintings of yaks, camels, falcons, etc., are not colored, all ink, both smooth and exquisite, both concise and general, vivid, both the beauty of Chinese painting and the meaning of calligraphy.
Wu Zuoren has extensive cultural knowledge and profound artistic accomplishment, has undergone strict skill training and has strong modeling ability, is familiar with the history of art at home and abroad, and understands the situation of contemporary Chinese painting, knows his artistic temperament and is good at exerting his personality and talents. He does not pursue fashion, nor does he set high standards; he is not cynical, nor does he follow the trend; he does not pretend to be sophisticated, nor is he plain and naïve. With his abundant knowledge and gentle and elegant attitude, he always expressed his healthy and fresh life and weather with simple and intrinsic pen and ink and image, forming a simple and elegant charm and ingenious aesthetic interest. This is the natural expression of his life cultivation and demeanor, and it is also his unique contribution to enriching and enhancing the character of Chinese painting and calligraphy with a distinct personal style.
Guangming Daily ( 2020.08.31 11 edition)