On September 8, a special forum was held in the gallery of the research exhibition of “The Land of Country Remade – New Chinese Painting Movement in the 1950s-60s”. This forum focuses on academic exchange and discussion within the same industry and is open to only a few professional media. It is the first time for CAFA Art Museum to direct this kind of symposium, by which curator Wang Chunchen hopes to make academic discussion “more relaxed, free or more real”, and also to dig deeper and find the blind spots in previous studies.
During the Forum
This exhibition selects from the collection of CAFA Art Museum brilliant collection works that reveal the innovation process of Chinese painting in the 1950s and 1960s and combs through discussion articles on the reform of Chinese painting. When going through the exhibition texts and works, the audience seems to move around in a history book as the research exhibition can be read and viewed and is both academic and artistic. The guests present at the forum are all scholars who have profoundly studied Chinese art history or art history of the 20th century in the arts field. CAFA Art Museum has planned a related collection series of exhibitions before, however, this exhibition begins with thematic aspect, sorts out and discusses issues on the creation of Chinese painting that got into huge changes during the 1950s and 1960s, hoping to step outside of traditional way of research by linear time and discover this history from a more macro perspective, so as to recognize their value and back-nurture the creation of today’s Chinese painting.
Wu Hongliang, Deputy Director of Beijing Fine Art Academy, Director of an art gallery,
Wu Hongliang, Deputy Director of Beijing Fine Art Academy, Director of an art gallery, Director of Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy, states that the shining points of an artwork are different in different contexts. So the works selected for “The Land of Country Remade” exhibition need to be understood in a special context and historical stage. It seems more interesting to have the exhibition interspersed with literature documents. “Pang Xunqin is a painter who has studied in France, and after returning to China, he created Chinese paintings and later design works. He mentioned that we might as well accept foreign things as possible, which is meaningful to use the phrase ‘might as well’; and ‘let those foreign things merge into our thinking and our personality for creation’, a plain statement expressed by a steady or mature artist when absorbing nutrition in creation.
“Landscape”, Fu Baoshi, 1962, 39 x 51 cm, Ink painting, CAFA Art Museum
In addition, speaking of our impression of people who are partial traditional, or Bimo (techniques of Chinese painting), we are reminded of the issue of saying “Bimo is nothing”. Thus, reviewing Chinese painting from these kinds of text can shed light on the background.” This exhibition provides an interesting academic background, as the whole 20th century is a kind of artistic expression of the universal need, from the logic of smaller-self to the expression of a larger-self system, in which keeping the artist’s individuality is valuable.
Hang Chunxiao, researcher of the Art Institute of the Chinese National Academy of Arts, Ph.D. supervisor
Hang Chunxiao, researcher of the Art Institute of the Chinese National Academy of Arts, Ph.D. supervisor, mentions that the reform of new Chinese painting after the founding of the nation is a manifestation of the whole social ideology that formed within a series of art movements such as the New Year Picture Movement at that time, which also shows a significant research value from a certain point of view. However, when judging the works of this period, we should figure out what criteria to base on, Bimo or color? What period of Bimo? Bimo appeared in new China’s new tradition? Bimo of Dong Qichang or “Four Wangs”(orthodox school of painting in the Qing Dynasty) or even earlier literati?
“Meishan Bridge”, Song Wenzhi, 1960, 28×40cm, Ink Painting, CAFA Art Museum
“New Pine Tree on the Taihang Mountain”, Zhou Zhilong, 1964, 164×188cm, Ink Painting, CAFA Art Museum
Bimo in different periods reflects the values and social trends of a particular era. If the New Chinese Painting Movement after the new China used sketching to reproduce the styles of Chinese painting, then the “Remade” of “The Land of Country Remade” is actually the reconstruction of an aesthetic style and result through the re-creation of ideology. Also, there are many differences in the treatment of aesthetic styles and results according to different painters. Such differences cannot be explained and understood with simple “reappearance”, and they are also different from what people usually think of “reproduction”. What are the aesthetic characteristics of Chinese paintings in the 1950s and 1960s? What is the relative proportion of political aesthetics, visual aesthetics, cultural aesthetics and classical aesthetics? It may be an inevitable proposition in Chinese art history in the 20th century.
“Red Rock”, Qian Songyan, 74 x 48.5cm, Ink painting, CAFA Art Museum
Dr. Yu Yang, Director of the Research Department of Chinese Painting Theory of CAFA
Dr. Yu Yang, Director of the Research Department of Chinese Painting Theory of CAFA, talks that, this exhibition presents the relationships between art ideologies (such as theory & creation, discourse, the theory of painting) and the creation itself, as well as social politics and artistic creation. Through the combination with relevant literature, the exhibition tries to restore the context of the times of “The Land of Country Remade”. When the literature is exhibited together with the works, it can be found that many artists at that time have inconsistency in their words and deeds, which is actually the problem of the relationship between art history narrative and works.
“Beijing Landscapes: Morning Sunlight in the West”, Shao Shenglang, 1961, 45×34cm, Ink Painting, CAFA Art Museum
These works are like scattered pearls and gemstones, from which what styles of necklaces can be created is depend on the art museum and curator. On the other hand, these paintings have a set of closed languages, and the context formed when they gathering together will cause some problems. Painters originally belong to a particular era, “Including Fu Baoshi, who possesses an artist temperament yet shows the characteristic of the times under the social background then, thus there appears a kind of complexity on him that makes your judgement different due to different things and times.” Therefore, it should be highly cautious when summarizing the law of many things, especially modern & contemporary history, art history and cultural history. This exhibition re-creates the context of “The Land of Country Remade” and more importantly, it has a thematic display of the collection of the art academy, which is also the first thematic exhibition of the creation of Chinese painting or new landscape painting by the academy after the founding of the country. Although it is a small exhibition, yet that is the point.
“Dawn Above the River”, Qian Songyan, 1960, 38×27cm, Ink painting, CAFA Art Museum
Sheng Wei, Associate Editor of “Art” Magazine and youth critic
Sheng Wei, Associate Editor of “Art” Magazine and youth critic, says that to evaluate the creation of Chinese paintings in the 1950s and 1960s, we should strip off the aesthetic value of art and discuss such a batch of artworks from the perspectives of art history and social & historical value. “We hope to cut into this history of China from the view of global history, because it is easy to treat the Chinese painting – new Chinese painting after the founding of the new China as a case isolated from the socialist camp or the whole world, which, in fact, was closely related to the entire historical background of the time.”
“Jiangling Riverbank”, Song Wenzhi, 1960, 28×34cm, Ink painting, CAFA Art Museum
“Memories of the South: Early Farming of Spring Field”, Zhang Renzhi, 1962, 35.5×47cm, CAFA Art Museum
“The sketching of new Chinese painting should be viewed from the angle of avant-garde art, because an important point of sketching is the social intervention, which is not part of traditional Chinese art but a unique feature of socialist art, coming from Dada – an avant-garde art of the 1920s. After being widely practiced by Chinese artists, sketching has been transformed into a pure artistic creation method.” “The art historians of new China found a historical basis in all ages for this creation method through reconstructing the history of domestic and foreign art about sketching, yet the history of real involvement of sketching into society is very short.” Ai Qing articulated a specific method for reforming new Chinese painting — “Sketching” is the most effective way – in his article “About Chinese Painting” that published in the “Journal of Literature and Art” in 1953. For this reason, around the same period, new Chinese painting established standards of literature and art and integrated with “socialist realism”.
Ge Yujun, lecturer of teaching department of the graduate school of CAFA, Ph.D. and critic
Ge Yujun, lecturer of teaching department of the graduate school of CAFA, Ph.D. and critic, mentions in the forum the basic situation and status of Chinese landscape painting since the foundation of the country. He thinks that the significance of this exhibition lies not in displaying works, but in raising the question. When talking about the reformation of Chinese painting, to which we refer in the field of Chinese painting and painting under the same system with the ideological transformation of intellectuals. The question of what is “new Chinese painting” comes from the ideas put forward at the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature. Since then, with the establishment of “New Chinese Painting Exhibition Committee” and “The Research Institute of New Chinese Painting ”, China has begun to germinate thoughts on tradition, which have great relations with the discussion of culture and art.
“Home is Best”, Wu Lizhu, 1964, 46×64cm, Ink painting, CAFA Art Museum
With an in-depth study into the definition of new Chinese painting at that time, it can be found that there are two points worthy of our attention: First, Chinese painting is an art form focusing on figure painting that serves for workers, peasants, soldiers and socialism. It was a group of artists after 1956 that made the major achievements of the renovation of landscape painting. In the early of 1950s, some old masters did not clearly distinguish between the concept of Chinese painting and watercolor painting. Ai Qing has suggested in the article “About Chinese Painting” that the creation of Chinese painting should have new content and new forms. “New content” is not hard to understand while “new form” refers to going out and starting from sketching. From 1953, artists began to create landscape painting, which gradually influenced many old men like Li Keyan, Fu Baoshi, and then massive sketching phenomenon appeared. Second, how can the creation of Chinese painting in this period be promoted in the aesthetic sense? The answer is to resort to the power of traditional Chinese painting. Thus we could see these works created in the 1950s – “landscape of new China” emerged after 1956 touch our hearts even today, due to their unique aesthetic and artistic value at a special historical stage.
“Lock the Yellow Dragon”, Zong Qixiang, 1960, 137×70cm, Ink painting, CAFA Art Museum
Wang Chunchen, Deputy Director of CAFA Art Museum and curator
In the end, curator Wang Chunchen summarized the forum: the Art History Research Institute will become more open in the future. As a research institution, it also wants to attract people’s attention to this issue from the perspective of the promotion of the museum collection exhibition. This exhibition is not only about Chinese painting but also landscape painting. In this era of great change in the 1950s, the reform of new Chinese painting cannot be separated from the reform of the whole 20th century to people, revolution and construction, as well as the conflicts and communication between Chinese and Western cultures. This change was a wave of the butterfly effect brought by the whole age. The historical background behind Chinese painting is very worthy of our consideration and study. In the future, the art museum will continue to dig deep to find corresponding collections of this historical period, expand and improve the scale of the exhibition, and form theoretical results.
During the Forum
