Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Wang [email protected]
AS a pioneer in the modern transfor-mation of fi ne arts in the 20th cen-tury, Guangdong is one of the several leading provinces which contributed greatly to the development of modern Chinese fi ne arts.
Presenting an outline of the evolu-tion of Guangdong fi ne arts in the past 100 years, a large exhibition entitled “Innovative Creation: A Centennial Retrospective of Guangdong Fine Arts” is currently on display at the Guangdong Museum of Art until Sept. 5. The exhibition showcases several hundred Guangdong classics, which occupy all 12 halls of the museum and are on loan from the collections of more than 40 museums in China including the National Art Museum of China. Highlighting 21 great masters of Chinese fi ne arts in halls 1 and 2, the exhibition comprises the follow-ing three major periods of the past 100 years.
Absorbing Western techniques (1916-1949)
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, most of the Chinese artists who studied abroad were Cantonese such as Chen Shuren, Gao Qifeng and Guan Liang. Among them, Li Tiefu was the fi rst returned Chinese student. He studied Western oil painting in Britain in 1887 and was regarded as “Father of Chinese Oil Painting.” With superior skill in classical oil painting, his masterpiece in the above exhibition “Head Portrait of a Musician” presents the profound wisdom of a musician using concise brushstrokes which show Li’s mastery of oil sketching.
As oil sketching is a fundamen-tal tool of oil painting, Gao Jianfu, founder of the renowned Lingnan Painting School, innovatively absorbed the approach of oil sketch-ing in traditional Chinese ink wash painting so as to realistically portray current national events, and initiated the modern transformation of tradi-tional Chinese painting. Proposing the idea of “saving the motherland with modern painting,” Lingnan Painting School became the most revolution-ary and infl uential Chinese painting school at the time.
Compared with oil and ink wash, woodcuts are a most effi cient way during wartime to arouse the public’s enthusiasm to changing the mother-land’s destiny. In response, the great Chinese writer Lu Xun advocated a modern woodcut movement, and more than half of the members were Cantonese. Among them, Li Hua established the Modern Prints Society in 1934 in Guangzhou, which became a center of modern printmaking in China. Combining both the accuracy
culture x 15CONTACT US AT: 8351-9409, [email protected]
Tuesday August 22, 2017
Pioneer of ModernityA Centennial Retrospective
of Guangdong Fine Arts
of Western print and the simplicity of ancient Chinese art, Gu Yuan, Lai Shaoqi and many other Cantonese members of the Modern Prints Society produced numerous brilliant modern prints. For instance, “Eight Hundred Heroes” by Hu Yichuan not only accurately depicts the fi ghting soldiers but also emphasizes their bravery via the painting’s simplifi ed forms.
Beautiful new forms (1949-1977)
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, many artworks began to focus on demonstrating the greatness of heroes or people. Depicting scenes of one or a group of people required advanced printing techniques. To solve these technical diffi culties, Yang Zhiguang, Luo Gongliu, Huang Xinbo, Pan He and other Cantonese artists assimilated Western techniques to produce many masterpieces in visually-pleasing new forms in areas such as ink wash, oil, print and sculpture respectively.
At the same time, Cantonese art-ists gained a reputation of excelling at creating beautiful new forms. One of these representative artists is Wang Zhaomin, the greatest Chinese watercolor master. Another repre-sentative is Lin Fengmian, who was the fi rst Chinese to propose the idea of “assimilating modern Western ele-ments in Chinese styles.”
As a pioneering modern master, Lin created many brilliant works in varied modern styles with concise shapes, elegant colors and harmo-nious compositions. For instance, employing skillful brushstrokes and concise shapes which are remi-niscent of ancient Chinese fresco paintings, his famous masterpiece “Lotus Flower” splendidly conveys the elegance, mildness and infi nite inner beauty of Chinese women.
Diverse individual styles (1978-2016)
Infl uenced by Lin Fengmian’s diversity, many Guangdong artists began to produce extraordinary works with distinguished individual styles, showing the true spirit of modernity and winning numerous national awards. For instance, with a charming style, Lin Yong’s ink wash “Pakistani Bride” illustrates the bride’s fascinating beauty. With a grand style, Li Jinkun’s ink wash “Great Desert” depicts the breath-taking vastness of the desert. With unique sculptural shapes, Song Guangzhi’s print “Bank” demon-strates the great confi dence of female fi shermen crossing the sea. Adopting geometric forms, Xia Tian’s sculpture “Zhang Qian” presents the solidarity of ancient soldiers.
The centennial retrospective was staged in Beijing last month, where it was highly appreciated by local art circles and attracted large audiences each day. “The retrospective shows that Guangdong artists have created the best works in almost all areas of fi ne arts and in all the main periods of the past 100 years. So the exhibi-tion is also an epitome of Chinese art history in the 20th century,” said Wang Yong, researcher of China Art Institute in Beijing at the symposium of the exhibition.(The author is a researcher at Guangdong Museum of Art.)
Venue: Guangdong Museum of ArtAdd: 38 Yanyu Road, Ersha Island, GuangzhouDates: Now through Sept. 5 Time: 9 a.m.-5 p.m., closed MondaysTel: (020) 8735-1468
Innovative Creation: A Centennial Retrospective of Guangdong Fine Arts
Ink wash painting “Pakistani Bride” by Lin Yong. Photos by courtesy of Guangdong Museum of Art
“Lotus Flower” by Lin Fengmian. “Crape Myrtle” by Wang Zhaomin.
“War in the Tunnels” by Luo Gongliu.
