Thoughts on the Rise and Innovative Development of Chinese Contemporary Oil Painting
Time: 2023/8/23 22:04:40 Source: China Art News Author: Zhang Zuying
Rise: An Important Phenomenon of Contemporary Chinese Culture
The development of Chinese oil painting to today’s level should be a miracle for the world’s art world. In the vicissitudes of the times, several generations of artists have pursued unremittingly for a hundred years and completed the transformation of oil painting art, which is a carrier of Western culture, into a carrier of Chinese culture. Sexual transition has made breakthrough progress. Today, Chinese oil painters are striving to expand and create art of the times with national spirit and cultural connotation.
A few years ago, we went to famous art museums in Paris, France and Italy to hold the “Chinese Implications-International Tour Exhibition of Chinese Oil Paintings”. so different. Generally speaking, Chinese oil painting has shown a different style from that of Europe, and some excellent painters and works have also appeared. During the tour in Italy in 2018, the curator of Palazzo Vittoria told me that quite a few of your works in this exhibition are comparable to those in any museum in Europe. The albums published by the exhibition are better than those printed in Italy and are worth collecting. So we should have confidence in the future development of oil painting art in China.
From a macro point of view, European oil painting has experienced six or seven hundred years of development, and has produced a large number of outstanding talents and excellent works. The artistic achievements they have created have pushed the art of oil painting to an almost extreme height. However, China has an excellent cultural tradition of more than 5,000 years. From ancient times to the present, today’s excellent cultural tradition has been formed through continuous integration with foreign cultures. At present, we also hope to create a national culture and cultural heritage through absorption, collision, and integration. The oil painting art of the spirit of the times can show the common spiritual value of mankind in a harmonious but different way.
The predecessors of Chinese oil painting art include Li Shutong, Wang Yuezhi, Guan Liang, Chen Baoyi, Guan Zilan, etc. who successively studied in Japan, and Li Tiefu, Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian, Yan Wenliang, Pang Xunqin, Wu Dayu, etc. who successively studied in Europe. founder and pioneer. Bathing in the excellent traditional Chinese culture, it was after the founding of New China that we really vigorously promoted the integration of Chinese and Western cultures and creative self-consciousness on the land of China. From 1953 to 1961, art colleges across the country sent seven batches of young teachers in oil painting, sculpture, art history, and stage art to the Soviet Union for further studies. In terms of oil painting, there are 12 such as Luo Gongliu, Xiao Feng, Quan Shanshi, Lin Gang, and Guo Shaogang. played an important role.
Flying Snow (Oil on Canvas) Zhan Jianjun
In 1955, the state specially hired the famous Soviet oil painter Maximov to come to the Central Academy of Fine Arts to open oil painting training classes. At that time, there were about 20 teachers with certain creative experience in various parts of my country, such as Hou Yimin, Feng Fasi, Zhan Jianjun, Ren Mengzhang, Jin Shangyi, Yu Yunjie, etc. people participated in training courses. Maximov has a wealth of teaching experience, and has given detailed and in-depth professional guidance in practice. Starting from various aspects of oil painting, such as color, shape, and theme creation concepts, he leads students to study the basic laws of oil painting art in depth. It plays an important role in improving the creative level of my country’s oil painting professionals. It is precisely these measures that provided important talent guarantee for a group of major themed creations produced in my country in the 1950s and 1960s that can still be regarded as classics.
In the 1980s, reform and opening up showed a trend of vigorous development. In a relaxed cultural environment, painting groups across the country are springing up like bamboo shoots after rain. Especially in 1985, the Oil Painting Art Symposium (Huangshan Conference) was held, and the Oil Painting Art Committee of the China Artists Association was established in the same year. With a special research institution, from this moment on, Chinese oil painting has really entered into a prosperous stage of development.
Since the introduction of oil painting art into China, people of insight soon realized that it is necessary to create oil paintings with Chinese characteristics. Because of this, although Chinese oil painting is only a hundred years old, Chinese oil painters began to explore the nationalization of oil painting in the 1950s and 1960s and carried out a series of practices. Oil painting should reflect the national spirit of China, which became the art of oil painting at that time. important topic. Academic groups such as the Oil Painting Art Committee of the China Artists Association and the Chinese Oil Painting Society have organized many large-scale exhibitions and academic seminars to promote “holding a sincere attitude, paying attention to social reality, carrying forward the national spirit, and advocating diverse explorations” and “taking the independent development path of Chinese oil painting” ” and other purposes, and held a number of important academic activities, carried out beneficial explorations on oil painting art reflecting the Chinese cultural tradition and contemporary social life from all aspects, made substantial contributions, and gradually made Chinese oil painting mature. period and showed a different appearance from European oil paintings, and really embarked on a healthy development path.
History has proved that if one wants to gain the respect and attention of the western art world, one must have what they do not have, be able to seek common ground while reserving differences, learn from each other’s strengths, and have one’s own artistic characteristics. This is also the endogenous motivation and self-confidence spirit for the development of a nation’s art. China’s oil painting art has made a breakthrough in this way, which is a unique phenomenon in China’s literary and art circles.
Blacksmith Amir (oil on canvas) Zhang Zuying
Exploration: Problems in the Paintability of Today’s Oil Painting Language
Although today’s Chinese oil painting has completed the historic transition of transforming the oil painting art as the carrier of Western culture into the carrier of Chinese contemporary culture after a century of hard work, and has achieved fruitful results, but from the pursuit of a higher artistic realm, especially When Chinese oil painting is developing towards the unique features of Chinese style and Chinese aesthetic spirit, there are still many issues worthy of attention: we should realize that, compared with Europe’s long history of development and profound cultural accumulation, due to the introduction of oil painting time Short, insufficient research depth, and different cultural environments have brought about some congenital deficiencies. Here I try to put forward some opinions and suggestions on the current situation of the development of oil painting art.
The exploration of painting must focus on the excavation of the deep spiritual world. In recent years, some works have simply pursued a large format, trying to achieve a shocking effect with size, and most of the paintings are taken from the appearance of life, especially in some thematic creations, where there are many figures and images piled up, only focusing on the arrangement of figures and detailed descriptions , do not pay attention to the diverse and unified combination structure and mutual relationship between characters, especially in multi-character works, the character and spiritual expression of the characters cannot be seen, and the deep spiritual pursuit and spiritual imagery cannot be expressed.
Personal artistic style should be symbolized and empty. Art has individuality, and individuality is externalized into style. Every mature artist has a distinctive artistic style, unique spiritual characteristics and aesthetic orientation, including the choice of subject matter and artistic techniques. This is very valuable. However, after some painters have achieved achievements and social recognition, they maintain the status quo, and dare not go half a step under the original characteristics and achievements, for fear of losing the audience’s approval after the change. These talented artists gradually stay away from aggressive pursuits. It has degenerated into paleness and poverty in form and form, lost the creative spirit and vitality of art, and made the once vivid personal style rigid into a schema, becoming an empty symbol and an empty shell on the surface, which caused some artists to stagnate. There are also some artists who deliberately pursue extreme styles on the basis of their original appearance in order to achieve a captivating effect. They are eager for success and ignore experience. It is a pity that due to the loss of objective detail supplements and the failure to handle the balance between subjectivity and objectivity, it becomes a conceptual empty schema, which also deviates from the true meaning of art.
In fact, artistic style is the natural expression of the artist’s personal character, temperament, and cultivation. At each stage of artistic creation, expressing changes in objects or themes or preferences, the artistic level should be continuously deepened and improved. While the overall artistic atmosphere is improving, it is like sailing against the current. If you do not advance, you will retreat. Stalling will inevitably lead to the stagnation and regression of art, and the loss of artistic vitality. Excellent works of art create a spiritual balance and unity of similarity in spirit and form. This balance is the foundation of art, and it is also the transformation and conservation of energy between subjective and objective, and it is the embodiment of the artist’s level and height.
The language of oil painting should be absorbed and integrated into the characteristics of Chinese cultural spirit. Views on this issue have always been different. The first view is: oil painting is a universal art and does not need to be integrated. The second point of view is: we must consciously pursue the integration of Chinese and Western cultures. The third point of view is: there is no need to take the initiative to pursue, the Chinese paintings must have Chinese characteristics. Each of the three points of view is justified. As art, oil painting is very personal. It is completely normal to create according to personal wishes, and it also meets the requirements of diversity and diversity in art, as long as you draw good works. The Chinese oil paintings created by the fusion of Chinese and Western art traditions should be of high quality to be valuable, but there is currently a tendency to simplify and lack of in-depth research and understanding of traditional cultural spirit and aesthetic concepts. For example, he pays more attention to freehand brushwork or black and white monochrome techniques and the transformation and use of materials, and blindly smears and smears with large brushes, which embodies more of the individual catharsis and publicity of Western art. The essence of the spirit is never in the swaying of the pen, but the key lies in the understanding and pursuit of artistic conception and spirit. Therefore, it is even more necessary to concentrate on understanding the concept and spirit of Chinese culture.
At present, the problem of superficial creation is serious. Many oil paintings are painted in black and white, without color, as if using gray, black, and white has a Chinese meaning, and loses the color language that is an important feature of oil painting. There is also a flood of photographic works. In recent years, in response to these phenomena, the art world has made great efforts to correct them. There are indeed fewer such works in thematic creations recently, but similar phenomena still exist.
The unity of artistic spirit and social reality is an important condition for producing the painting quality of oil painting. No matter whether the works of art are strong or elegant in form, or realistic, expressive, freehand or abstract, they all show the relationship between the artist’s subjective intention and objective reality. The correct control of energy transformation and balance reflects the artist’s creative ability and level, the most important of which is the artist’s own spiritual realm, cultivation, and taste, which determine the level of the work and the contribution. For example, Russian artists located in Northern Europe created an elegant, graceful, subtle and noble gray tone in an environment with high sky and low clouds and lack of sunlight, which produced a group of artists such as the Tourist School. On the Mediterranean coast in southern Europe, under the warm and bright sunshine, Impressionist artists with rich colors and various forms were born. It is the comprehensive quality of the artist that allows the artist to perfectly create moving spiritual works in the process of comprehending and transforming the objective environment. On the contrary, ignoring life experience and only paying attention to style creation will cause various problems. For example, some works called Stijl become monotonous, strong equals blunt, perfect equals fineness, and rich equals complexity. Linked with personal style, it is obvious that this kind of “pseudo-style” that destroys the energy transformation between subject and object and the delicate balance of low-level conversion only pays attention to hype and destroys the true meaning of art. Such works spread in society, causing various problems, and also affected the aesthetic orientation of the public. This is something we should be vigilant about.
Contemporary Chinese oil painting is the concentrated expression of China’s centuries-old history and the academic achievement of several generations of Chinese oil painters’ hard work. No matter in terms of language or ideology, Chinese oil paintings reflect a multi-coexisting and rich and diverse creative pattern. The free presentation of art forms such as realism, expression, imagery, and abstraction clearly demonstrates the profound changes in Chinese social and cultural thinking. It can be seen that Chinese oil painting has made considerable artistic achievements in mastering the basic expression system of Western oil painting, exploring the language form of oil painting, integrating national aesthetic concepts, and expressing the spiritual outlook of Chinese people. Chinese oil painting is forming a unique artistic outlook with Chinese style and Chinese aesthetic spirit, embodying unique and freehand painting features, and consciously embarking on a road of exploration different from the development of Western oil painting. The unique contribution and cultural value of art.
Looking back on the development of Chinese oil painting in the past century and displaying the academic achievements of contemporary Chinese oil painting, on the one hand, it is to continuously promote the excellent works of contemporary Chinese oil painting art to the society, so that more public can share the creative achievements of oil painting art and improve their artistic quality ; On the other hand, promote oil painters to communicate with each other, learn from each other’s strengths, better promote academic research, and jointly make greater efforts and deeper explorations for the further improvement of the art level of Chinese oil painting.
Today in the 21st century, Chinese oil painters still do not lack the courage and wisdom to create. It is in this sense that the achievements of contemporary Chinese oil painting are not only a review of the century-old history, but also a new starting point and a new cornerstone for the future.
(The author is a researcher at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, former vice president of the Chinese Oil Painting Society)
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