Diligent and insightful art explorer: Lin Gang
By Shao Dazhen
Lin Gang and I have known each other for sixty years. We both studied at the Repin Institute. I was a 21-year-old Literature Department freshman when I was sent to the Repin Institute to study art history in 1955. Lin Gang went to Repin one year earlier than me. At the age of 28, he was already a lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and received nationwide fame for his work Zhao Guilan at the Conference of Outstanding Workers, which won the first prize of National New Year Painting Award. He enrolled in the CAFA with the Huabei United University’s Fine Arts Department, when it was merged into the CAFA in 1949. In us junior fellow students’ minds, he was fairly experienced in revolutions. He influenced me intangibly with his restless learning attitude, enquiring spirit into art theories, honest courtesies towards people, and his indifference to fame and wealth. Not only was he diligent in study and art making, he also had deep thinking of art, holding a skeptical attitude towards the formulating and conceptualizing tendency of the then Soviet and Chinese art. Lin Gang’s sincerity towards nature and art, along with his persistence in oil painting language, is reflected both in his school assignments, graduation work and his sketching of the nature. He sees sketching as an important measure to draw inspirations from the objective world and to express feelings, as well as a more direct, independent and casual creative form. The sketches he created during and after his Soviet days show his focus on expression of his own feelings - a contrast to classical oil paintings that value ‘molding’ techniques - he pursues unconfined use of strokes and colors, and the beauty of tonality and spirit of the picture. His works fully convey his high-leveled artistic skills and rich modern art deposits.
After returning to China in 1959, Lin Gang was engaged in teaching and creation of revolutionary history paintings. There are two outstanding characters of these works he created in the 1960s: the revelation of the true face of history, profound depiction of people’s rich and complex spiritual world; and the manifestation of the beauty of modeling composition and tonality, which are characteristic of oil painting language. He holds a coherent opinion towards oil painting’s development: Artists should study thoroughly the concept and experience of classical European and modern oil paintings; grasp the characteristics of the oil painting language, especially the color and tonality; not be afraid of difficulties; and not chase after superficial ‘national features’ without mastering oil painting skills.
For the past 30 years, Lin Gang and his wife Pang Tao ignored people’s misunderstandings and gossips, encouraged each other in the exploration of abstract art. They relentlessly drew inspirations from their own life and art experience, traditional national arts, and international arts especially the modern ones, to enrich their language and styles. Their works experienced constant changes, through which modernity, individuality and picturesqueness gradually reveal themselves. They also generously shared their research results with the academy, devoting greatly to the foundation and development of the Fourth Studio in the Oil Painting Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. I believe it’s a good thing to have two serious explorers and initiators of abstract art, instead of two practitioners of realistic painters, in this vast country, in that their diligence, spiritually rich contemporary art creation and art thinking are beneficial to our knowledge of the boundlessness of the art world, the due rich and diverse language of art expressions, so that we could avoid the simplification of art language and expression techniques. After all, standardization and simplification are the biggest obstacle to the progress of art!
Diligent and insightful art explorer: Lin Gang
By Shao Dazhen
Lin Gang and I have known each other for sixty years. We both studied at the Repin Institute. I was a 21-year-old Literature Department freshman when I was sent to the Repin Institute to study art history in 1955. Lin Gang went to Repin one year earlier than me. At the age of 28, he was already a lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and received nationwide fame for his work Zhao Guilan at the Conference of Outstanding Workers, which won the first prize of National New Year Painting Award. He enrolled in the CAFA with the Huabei United University’s Fine Arts Department, when it was merged into the CAFA in 1949. In us junior fellow students’ minds, he was fairly experienced in revolutions. He influenced me intangibly with his restless learning attitude, enquiring spirit into art theories, honest courtesies towards people, and his indifference to fame and wealth. Not only was he diligent in study and art making, he also had deep thinking of art, holding a skeptical attitude towards the formulating and conceptualizing tendency of the then Soviet and Chinese art. Lin Gang’s sincerity towards nature and art, along with his persistence in oil painting language, is reflected both in his school assignments, graduation work and his sketching of the nature. He sees sketching as an important measure to draw inspirations from the objective world and to express feelings, as well as a more direct, independent and casual creative form. The sketches he created during and after his Soviet days show his focus on expression of his own feelings - a contrast to classical oil paintings that value ‘molding’ techniques - he pursues unconfined use of strokes and colors, and the beauty of tonality and spirit of the picture. His works fully convey his high-leveled artistic skills and rich modern art deposits.
After returning to China in 1959, Lin Gang was engaged in teaching and creation of revolutionary history paintings. There are two outstanding characters of these works he created in the 1960s: the revelation of the true face of history, profound depiction of people’s rich and complex spiritual world; and the manifestation of the beauty of modeling composition and tonality, which are characteristic of oil painting language. He holds a coherent opinion towards oil painting’s development: Artists should study thoroughly the concept and experience of classical European and modern oil paintings; grasp the characteristics of the oil painting language, especially the color and tonality; not be afraid of difficulties; and not chase after superficial ‘national features’ without mastering oil painting skills.
For the past 30 years, Lin Gang and his wife Pang Tao ignored people’s misunderstandings and gossips, encouraged each other in the exploration of abstract art. They relentlessly drew inspirations from their own life and art experience, traditional national arts, and international arts especially the modern ones, to enrich their language and styles. Their works experienced constant changes, through which modernity, individuality and picturesqueness gradually reveal themselves. They also generously shared their research results with the academy, devoting greatly to the foundation and development of the Fourth Studio in the Oil Painting Department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. I believe it’s a good thing to have two serious explorers and initiators of abstract art, instead of two practitioners of realistic painters, in this vast country, in that their diligence, spiritually rich contemporary art creation and art thinking are beneficial to our knowledge of the boundlessness of the art world, the due rich and diverse language of art expressions, so that we could avoid the simplification of art language and expression techniques. After all, standardization and simplification are the biggest obstacle to the progress of art!
2019-03-11
