◆ Chen Chiyu / Wen
Since the emergence of the New Culture Movement in the early 20th century, Chinese painting has developed forward in the context and ideological confrontation of inheriting tradition and reform and innovation, Western painting modeling and pen and ink language, realistic sketching and reflecting life, and several generations of Chinese painters have boldly explored and forged ahead for the modern transformation and development of Chinese painting! Mr. Bai Xueshi is a practitioner of the modern transformation and creation of Chinese painting, and he has explored his own unique language and formal characteristics of Chinese painting. After nearly a year of preparation, the Art Museum of Tsinghua University now exhibits some of Bai Xueshi's representative figure paintings, landscape paintings, flower and bird paintings and sketches, which have distinct characteristics of the times. Viewing these exquisite masterpieces on display, the audience can not only see the creative achievements and characteristics of Bai Xueshi, but also glimpse the historical trajectory of the modern development of Chinese painting.
Born in 1915 from a commoner family in Beijing, Bai Xueshi studied flower and bird painting with Mr. Zhao Mengzhu during middle school and 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 Zhongshan Park, Beijing. In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Bai Xueshi served as an art teacher in Beijing No. 48 Middle School, transferred to the Fine Arts Department of Beijing Normal College of Arts in 1958, taught landscape painting at the Beijing Academy of Arts in 1960, and transferred to the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts as an associate professor and professor in 1964. While teaching seriously, he actively went deep into life and carried out sketching activities, and in the 1950s and 1960s, he created a number of figure paintings reflecting the new socialist countryside, as well as new landscape paintings and flower and bird paintings. After the 1970s, he went to Guilin many times to sketch, creating a large number of landscape paintings with the theme of the scenery of the Li River, smoke and rain, and Yangshuo scenery, and created large-scale landscape paintings for important public event buildings in Beijing, such as the Great Hall of the People, the Zhongnanhai Office Building, and the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, forming the style characteristics of his landscape paintings that are elegant and beautiful, and the weather is bright, which is valued by the art world and society, and has a greater impact.
Hanbai Baixue of Dai Temple at the foot of Mount Taishan, 1984 Ink on paper, 68cm×88cm, Tsinghua University Art Museum
In the early days of the founding of New China, as a traditional art form, the question of how Chinese painting can express new social life and shape new character images has aroused discussion in the art community, and Chinese painters have boldly explored. In the 1950s and 1960s, Bai Xueshi participated in the artistic practice of reforming Chinese painting, and created a number of excellent works that reflected the new appearance of the countryside and the production labor and new life of peasants, such as "Selling Grain to the State", "Shepherd Girl", "Feeding Fish", "Celebrating Universal Suffrage", "Picking Cotton", "Dawa Hero", "Cotton Harvest", "Marching toward Nature", "Harvesting Castor", etc., using new artistic concepts and ideological feelings to express the labor scenes of farmers, and the pen and ink forms are fresh and natural, vivid and vivid. These works have created a new look of new Chinese paintings, presenting visual images of social life in the new era, and are one of the important achievements of the creation of Chinese figure paintings in the early days of New China.
Mr. Bai Xueshi is a famous contemporary Landscape Painter in China, who worked hard to copy ancient landscape paintings as early as the 1930s and 1940s, studying the pen and ink, composition, color expression characteristics and techniques of traditional landscape paintings. After the founding of New China, he embraced the will to portray the rivers and mountains of the motherland, followed the aesthetic principle of "foreign teacher creation, middle gain of the source of the heart" put forward by Zhang Xuan of the Tang Dynasty, and explored the creation rules from sketching to form, from object to subject, from natural scenery to pen and ink language, according to the precepts of Yao yao of the Southern Dynasty. He went deep into the famous mountains and rivers of the motherland to observe and feel the landscape scenery, studied the brush and ink language, line color and correspondence between the rubbing dot dyeing and the expression of natural landscapes in Chinese painting, and created a number of landscape paintings with new formal characteristics depicting Huangshan, Lushan, Taishan, Taihangshan and Yanshan. Since 1972, with the task of creating murals for important state organs in Beijing, he has traveled to Guilin many times to sketch, creating huge landscape paintings with the landscape of the Guilin area as the theme, hanging in buildings such as the Zhongnanhai Office Building, the Great Hall of the People and the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, and his works have also been given as state gifts to foreign heads of state and friends. These works not only show the aesthetic charm of landscape painting, but also play their specific social and cultural roles. Bai Xueshi's landscape paintings create a modern form of brush and ink and aesthetics. The author examines it from a modern aesthetic perspective, showing the beauty and elegance of the southern landscape, the works may be smoke and rain, or the spring is bright; it also depicts the majesty and momentum of the northern landscapes, and the works may be layered with mountains and mountains, or autumn colors. Its overall style is clean and handsome, majestic and warm, lush and elegant, and vivid.
Castor Harvest Bai Xueshi 1961 Ink and Color on Paper 45cm×44.5cm Collection of Beijing Academy of Painting
The "Zhou Yi ZhiXia" contains the following words: Zi Yue: "The book is not complete, the words are not complete" and "the saints stand in the image to fulfill their intentions". Words can not exhaust the idea and concept, the creation of the image can be fully expressed. Mountains and rivers are the elephants of heaven and earth, and landscape paintings are the great beauty of heaven and earth. The landscape paintings of Bai Xueshi stand up for the rivers and mountains of the motherland, convey the gods for the landscapes of Shenzhou, and save the intention for the creation of heaven and earth! The intention to save the pen first, the image of the intention, the meaning of the end, is contained in Mr. Xueshi's soul to swallow the wilderness, the master of the creation of the aesthetic spirit and grandeur, is the authenticity and spiritual interest of nature. The meaning of the painter is the artistic emotion and aesthetic concept that integrates the mind and things, and will understand the subject and the object, and it is also the divine thought and meeting that envelops the heavens and the earth in the form and frustrates all things in the pen in the creation! The creation of Chinese landscape painting is the path and passage of natural philosophy to art philosophy. Writing shapes and colors in shape is to write nature for the sake of magic; writing gods with shapes and writing shapes with gods is to convey the portrayal of gods, which are the unique laws of Chinese painting modeling. Chinese painters stand up to the image of the heart, should see the heart, feel the object of the mind, god super rational, into the aesthetic realm of artistic thinking; thinking and the realm, the heart and the hand, the picture of the shadow, the god travels the world, to reach the free world of landscape painting creation and appreciation! Writing qi and picture, standing image to the fullest, this image, is the image of art, aesthetic meaning! Watch the landscape paintings of the white snow stones, and at the same time read a perceptual philosophical book that naturally unfolds towards life! Chinese landscape painting and painting theory, carrying the unique aesthetic feeling and artistic thinking of the Chinese nation, is the natural philosophy, life philosophy and aesthetic philosophy that we need to constantly study and understand!
Snow white stone
Bai Xueshi (1915-2011), born in a commoner family in Beijing, studied flower and bird painting with Mr. Zhao Mengzhu during middle school and 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 landscape flowers and birds in Zhongshan Park in Beijing. In the early days of the founding of New China, he served as an art teacher in Beijing No. 48 Middle School, and in 1958 he was transferred to the Fine Arts Department of Beijing Normal College of Arts to teach, in 1960 he taught landscape painting at the Beijing Academy of Arts, and in 1964 he was transferred to the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts as an associate professor and honorary professor. While teaching seriously, he actively went deep into life and carried out sketching activities, and in the 1950s and 1960s, he created a number of figure paintings reflecting the new socialist countryside, as well as new landscape paintings and flower and bird paintings. Since the 1970s, he has been to Guilin many times to sketch, creating a large number of landscape paintings with the themes of smoke and rain on the Li River and Yangshuo landscapes, and creating large-scale landscape paintings for important public activity venues in Beijing such as the Great Hall of the People, the Zhongnanhai Chiefs Reception Hall, and the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, forming the elegant and beautiful style characteristics of his landscape paintings, which are valued by the art world and society and have a far-reaching impact.
(Originally published in Literary and Art Life (Art China), No. 3, 2021)