Qi Baishi
In 1948, Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi took a group photo in the house
"Hollyhock Frog" Xu Beihong Qi Baishi collaboration 1948
"Lotus Shrimp Diagram" Qi Baishi Zhang Daqian cooperation 1950
In 1936, Xu Beihong took art students to Huangshan to sketch, met Zhang Daqian by chance, and took a group photo to commemorate the occasion.
"Lotus Shrimp Diagram" Qi Baishi Zhang Daqian cooperation 1948
Recently, the "Thousand Years of Travel - Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, Zhang Daqian Exhibition" was held at the Aurora Museum in Shanghai. It is reported that this exhibition is the first time that the works of Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and Zhang Daqian have gathered in Shanghai, presenting more than 60 authentic works of 3 modern and contemporary artists. Xu Beihong's "Zodiac" series, Qi Baishi's letter of appointment at National Peking University, xu Beihong's more than 10 correspondence with Qi Baishi and other precious historical materials are on display.
Xu Ji, curator of this exhibition and director of the Exhibition Collection Department of Xu Beihong Memorial Hall, introduced that the first group exhibition of Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and Zhang Daqian was exhibited at Xu Beihong's Chongqing Art Museum last year. The Exhibits in Shanghai are more abundant, and the "Thousand Years of Travel" comes from a calligraphy work by Xu Beihong. Its special feature is that Xu Beihong used a pencil to outline the line and filled it with ink, which is more like the Chinese inscription and the text, and it is also Xu Beihong's attempt at calligraphy innovation at that time.
Although it is necessary to show different Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and Zhang Daqian, the exhibition site still starts with the most classic Qi Baishi's "Shrimp Map", Xu Beihong's "Running Horse" and Zhang Daqian's "Luofu Cloth Platform". The 6 exhibition parts of "Opening Overture", "Art Road Double", "Taoist Nature", "Spring and Autumn Reality", "Mysterious Creation of Thousand Wonders" and "Endless Life" tell the story of the three artists who have met and interacted at the beginning of the last century and jointly created and supported each other on the artistic road through images, authentic works, scene restoration, chronology, etc.
In the "Endless Life" section, Xu Beihong's "Zodiac" series of works made its overall debut as a whole, and the animal image of the exquisite portrait was vivid and lively on the paper. In 1927, Xu Beihong met Zhang Daqian, and that year Zhang Daqian came to prominence in the Shanghai painting world with his real skills of imitating Shi Taochao, and officially became a "sea drifter". The next year, Xu Beihong became acquainted with Qi Baishi, and qi Baishi, a senior "North Drifter", had only bought the Courtyard of No. 15 Beiping Cross-train Hutong for more than a year. This exhibition also focuses on the scene of the reunion of several masters, especially the co-creation of three masters, including "Hollyhock Frog" and "Hollyhock Shrimp" cooperated by Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi, two "Lotus Shrimp Diagrams" cooperated by Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian, and "Du Fu Poetry" cooperated by Xu Beihong and Zhang Daqian. Collaborative paintings are a relic of friendship between artists, but are also used as a heavy gift to a confidant or His Holiness. In 1948, Xu Beihong and Zhang Daqian collaborated on 4 works with Qi Baishi. In October 1947, the three friends also held the only group exhibition of three people in Tianjin, which was a continuous and intensive public opinion war on the dispute between the old and new of Chinese painting, which also showed why the three people felt sorry for each other, and fully presented the support and friendship of the three people on the road of artistic creation. In 1928, Xu Beihong returned to China after studying in Europe, and for Xu Beihong, who consciously undertook the responsibility of reviving Chinese art and improving Chinese painting, "boldly absorbing new sketch-based training" was his teaching direction. However, in the 20th century, most of the Beiping painting circles were "traditional", and Xu Beihong's artistic concept was incompatible with the atmosphere of Beiping. For a long time, Xu Beihong was in the whirlpool of artistic controversy. Xu Beihong, Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian all belonged to the "new" camp, and it was precisely because of the joint exhibition at that time that the confrontation between the new and the old gradually became white-hot. Zhang Daqian chaoyuan yue song straight to take the Tang style, eat ancient energy; Qi Baishi took materials from the folk, seeking simplicity and clumsiness, and distanced himself from tradition; Xu Beihong used the west for chinese use, and was committed to transforming the mainstream of Ming and Qing literati painting with the spirit of romantic realism. Although the three people appreciate each other, they have different paths and different styles and interests.
In Xu Beihong's eyes, Zhang Daqian and Qi Baishi represent the highest achievements of Chinese painting in that era, and also represent Xu Beihong's ideal of transforming Chinese painting: the two sides of the unity of ancient and modern, on the one hand, it is to inherit and inherit the Chinese paintings before the Song Dynasty, especially the Tang Dynasty, because it was the most powerful and vital era of Chinese painting. Zhang Daqian is good at imitating the ancient, close to Shitao, and far behind the Tang Dynasty, Zhao Song, so he represents the pole of "ancient" in Xu Beihong's concept; on the other hand, it is to break through the literati painting style that has only pursued pen and ink interest and a delicate and decaying literary atmosphere since the Ming and Qing dynasties. Qi Baishi's "Wild Road" represents the pole of "present" in Xu Beihong's concept, and Qi Baishi rarely looks at the works of the ancients, except for his own teachers. Chen Banding invited Qi Baishi to visit after the Forbidden City opened in the 1920s, but Qi Baishi refused, saying that seeing this would disturb his thinking. His intention was to break through on his own. Therefore, Qi Baishi's paintings are "not ancient and not modern", they are a school of their own, he believes that art should "change", "change" is the highest state of art, the so-called "change to change", but it must be "positive change" - "the right can know the change, the change is the right change", neither for the sake of change, nor from the beginning. Xu Beihong believes that Qi Baishi's landscape is this kind of positive change with "moderate virtue", which has both the vastness of "possessing all things" and "filling the true body", as well as the subtlety of "creating nature mysteriously" and not "taking meaning out of context", and has reached a very high new realm.
In the "new" camp, these three artists feel sorry for each other and are "revolutionary fellow travelers" in the pursuit of strength, innovation and change in order to change the decline of Chinese painting. It is reported that during the exhibition, the organizers also carried out a series of lectures around the theme of "ink innovation", seals, ink painting creation and other activities.
Courtesy of Shanghai Aurora Museum