Mr. Bai Xueshi (1988)
In the stormy hundred years of the last century, the wave of "learning from the West and gradually learning from the East" gave birth to great changes in Chinese culture and art. At that time, Chinese painting was facing the proposition of how to inherit and innovate, and several generations of painters practiced it and tirelessly explored the road of modern transformation and development of Chinese painting.
If you count the shining stars that can be called "the creators of modern Chinese painting", one of the superstars is simple and unpretentious, pure and stable, and can be listed with Xu Beihong, Li Keyan, Wu Guan, and other artists. He is the master of modern Chinese landscape painting - Bai Xueshi.
In 1979, Bai Xueshi took students from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts to Guilin to sketch
Bai Xueshi, whose original name was Bai Zengrui, was born in 1915 to a commoner family in Beijing. He studied flower and bird painting with Mr. Zhao Mengzhu during middle school, and studied landscape painting with Mr. Liang Shunian at the age of 20. In 1941, he joined the "Chinese Painting Research Society" in Beiping and participated in related creative seminars, and held many exhibitions of landscapes, flowers and birds in Beijing Zhongshan Park.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Bai Xueshi actively went deep into life and carried out sketching activities, creating a number of new rural figure paintings and new landscapes, flowers and birds. After the 1970s, he went to Guilin, Guangxi Province, more than a dozen times, hiking along the banks of the Li River to sketch, leaving behind many beautiful and beautiful landscape works, forming a unique "White School Landscape". At the same time, he also created large-scale landscape paintings for important public event buildings such as the Great Hall of the People, Zhongnanhai Office Building, Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, etc., which are valued by the art world and society.
In the 1980s, Bai Xueshi taught students at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts
In addition to his status as an artist, Mr. Bai Xueshi is also a respected mentor. He has been teaching Chinese painting in various institutions throughout his life, and since 1964 he has been teaching at the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts (now the School of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University). As a teacher, Mr. Bai is diligent and determined, teaching art by example, and deeds speak louder than words. Zhang Fu, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, also said of his mentor: "Mr. Bai is obscure, humble, and very low-key and peaceful. His paintings are all in the heart, the portrayal of the heart. If it were not for having such a mind that was so free of distractions and crystal clear, it would never have been possible to draw such a wonderful picture. ”
"Standing Spirit: Snow White Stone Chinese Painting Exhibition" Entrance
This year marks the 105th anniversary of Mr. Bai Xueshi's birth, and after nearly a year of preparation, the Art Museum of Tsinghua University has launched the "Standing Image - Bai Xueshi Chinese Painting Exhibition". The documentary exhibition presents a total of 137 paintings of Bai Xueshi, as well as a number of sketches. Through the exhibition, we can not only review Mr. Bai Xueshi's entire artistic life and his three-dimensional image in art history, understand the achievements and characteristics of his artistic creation, but also glimpse the historical trajectory of the modern development of Chinese painting.
Exhibition site
Some of the works on display
A number of flower, bird and figure paintings displayed in the exhibition are impressive. For example, "What Ju Zhan Sees" is exquisite and simple, "Castor Harvest" is lively and flexible, "Marching toward Nature" exudes a dramatic tension, and "Shepherd Girl" draws the beauty of life with a workmanship pen... Mr. Bai Xueshi's landscape works are widely known, but his achievements in flower, bird and figure painting are not well known in the past. In fact, Mr. Bai's flower and bird paintings also show profound skills, extremely pure, and the character paintings are both in shape and god, whether it is the shaping of characters in labor scenes or the sketching of characters, they all have fresh and natural, vivid aesthetic characteristics, and are typical images of the new era and new life.
"Ju Zhan See", 1962, ink on paper, 19cm×52cm, private collection
Castor Harvest, 1961, ink and color on paper, 45cm×44.5cm, Beijing Academy of Painting
"Marching toward Nature", 1958, ink and color on paper, 98.5*193cm, Beijing Academy of Painting
Shepherd Girl, 1959, ink and color on paper, 129cm×62cm, private collection
Another part of the high-profile exhibition works is naturally Mr. Bai's Qishan Xiushui, especially the "Guilin Landscape" series created by Mr. Bai after he passed the age of Hua Jia. As Sultan, curator of this exhibition and deputy director of the Art Museum of Tsinghua University, wrote in his foreword: "In his pen, the mountains and clouds are open, the Qingfeng floating water, and the natural scenery of China has generated an open and pure mental image in the heart of this great artist." "Through years of observation, perception, thinking, selection, integration and organization of natural landscapes, Mr. Bai Xueshi has created new landscape painting expression patterns and methods. Its landscape painting peak "Guilin Landscape" series, smoke and rain, water and light, present a fresh and elegant, sparse and moist artistic realm.
"Smoke and Rain Li River", 1989, ink and color on paper, 68cm×272cm, Baixueshi Art Collection
Juma River Late Autumn, 1988, ink and color on paper, 101cm×336cm, private collection
At the opening seminar of the exhibition, Shang Hui, editor-in-chief of Fine Arts Magazine, compared Bai Xueshi with Li Keyan's Lijiang Landscape, and he believed that the Guilin landscapes and rivers made by Bai and Li were quiet and quiet in terms of artistic conception, and the latter was thick and thick, "one white and one black", each with its own personality. Liu Jude, a professor at the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts, proposed that the guilin they painted had a difference between yin and yang, Bai Xueshi paid more attention to "yang", and Li Ke dyeed "yin", but in reflecting the characteristics of Chinese painting "waiting for things", the two are extremely similar. Mr. Bai Xueshi is through "walking into nature to experience the idea of traditional Chinese painting, is to use his own heart and body to feel the natural mountains and rivers", in Chinese painting, this is called "the unity of mind and matter".
Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, 1995, ink and color on paper, 136cm×68cm, Baixueshi Art Collection
In addition, there are also a number of painting sketches and manuscripts in the exhibition, which can be used to carefully observe the precious materials, feelings and summaries left by Mr. Bai Xueshi in his creation. Through these mostly yellowed pages, it seems that you can see Mr. Li's dedication to creation and diligent research.
Part of the comic strip manuscript on display, 1964, paper, brush, multiple sizes, private collection
A sketch of a painting with Mr. Bai's notes
"Re-experience, recognize, study, and deeply understand how such a painter who has been engaged in the practice of artistic creation for decades and has made important achievements, how he keeps pace with the times through artistic practice, and then to the Chinese freehand artistic conception embodied behind his works." The specific case of Bai Xueshi enables us to develop a deep understanding of Chinese cultural traditions from the perspective and the heart, and at the same time arouses our love for the country, the homeland and the beautiful rivers and mountains of the motherland. Feng Yuan, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and honorary chairman of the China Artists Association, said in the opening speech of the exhibition. After the end of this exhibition, Mr. Bai's family will donate six works to add a dazzling bed to the collection of the Tsinghua University Art Museum, a good story.
Other works on display:
"Han Bai of Dai Temple at the Foot of Mount Tai", 1984, 68cm×88cm
"Moonlit Nights", 1995, ink on paper, 45cm×50cm, private collection
The Former Residence of Chairman Mao of Shazhouba, 1963, Ink and Color on Paper, 52cm×56cm, National Art Museum of China
"Raw and Spicy Writing Mountains and Rivers", year unknown, ink and color on paper, 53cm×135cm, Tsinghua University Art Museum Collection
【Exhibition Information】
Standing Image Fulfillment - Exhibition of Chinese Paintings by Bai Xueshi
Exhibition period: September 10, 2020 to November 1, 2020
Exhibition venue: Exhibition Hall on the third floor of Tsinghua University Art Museum
(Text/Figure Qi Yu, some of the works pictures and related materials provided by the Tsinghua University Art Museum)
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