Speaking of Lin Dongfu, many Shanghai viewers grew up watching the shows he hosted and the TV dramas he starred in. On June 5th, the "Portrait Exhibition of Sir Lin Dongfu in Paris in April" kicked off at the Bund One Art Museum.
Lin Dongfu was born in Shanghai in 1957. He is best known for his early years as a translator and producer and later as a television host, as well as for his television characters. Lin Dongfu has loved painting since childhood, and insisted on self-study sketching when he was young. Since 2013 he has been working with the Italian painter Matteo, with blues and jazz as his subjects.
For his beloved jazz, Lin Dongfu has traveled to the United States, Canada and other countries several times, along the Mississippi River to explore the soil and humanistic feelings that bred early blues music. He also collected old black-and-white photographs of blues and jazz legends, trying to translate the light and shadow of the photographs into the light and shadow of the paintings, and looking for the color of their skins from the old black and white photographs.
Lin Dongfu is familiar with the music and life of each of his own characters. He wholeheartedly expresses the form and god of the jazz masters, and the long process of depiction is like a dialogue that touches the soul again and again. As he describes it – "These jazz masters have made my soul belong, so I used this soul to paint you guys whose faces are full of stories."
The exhibition features 46 portraits of jazz legends by Lin Dongfu, including the famous jazz musicians Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Billie Hallerday, most of whom have played or sung the classic "Paris in April".
Lin Dongfu chose these legends because these black musicians did not have equal rights in life in the United States at that time. Lin Dongfu hopes that by depicting these jazz soul figures, the ups and downs of the fate of the characters in the picture will be conveyed, and the image of a musical legend that is vivid, full of vitality and directly hits the soul is reproduced for the audience.
In addition, the exhibition will also feature 26 pen sketches of Lin Dongfu's figures and landscapes. The audio guides in the exhibition are all recorded by Lin Dongfu himself, and his full and thick voice tells the story behind these works, which can be described as an excellent artistic audio-visual feast.
It is worth mentioning that as the curator of this exhibition, the famous artist and scholar Chen Danqing painted a portrait of Lin Dongfu, which was also exhibited in this exhibition. Chen Danqing said: "I have never seen a painter who is busy and idle, such as Lin Dongfu, with such a realistic nature of Geng Jie, loyally depicting the eyes and nose bridge of a big face. His studio stood full of jazz gods. ”
Every weekend during the exhibition period, the well-known jazz band JZ Music will be invited to hold a special performance at a fixed time, so don't miss it for jazz lovers.
As one of the special events of the "Sino-French Cultural Spring" in 2021, the exhibition is hosted by Shanghai Tianxie Cultural Development Co., Ltd., sponsored by Bright Dairy Co., Ltd. and Pernod Ricard (China) Trading Co., Ltd. with the special support of the Ablery Single Malt Whisky, and special support from the Consulate General of France in Shanghai and the Shanghai Association for Foreign Cultural Exchange. The exhibition will run until 20 June.
Reporter / Liu Yi
Editor / Lulu Chen
Photo / Zhou Fei