Contemporary Chinese Oil Painting Masterpieces Collection: Quan Shanshi

Author: Cao Yiqiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-12-01
Features: This book is a part of the series "Contemporary Chinese Oil Painting Masterpieces Collection," focusing on Quan Shanshi. It includes a large number of works by the renowned contemporary oil painter, Quan Shanshi, accompanied by extensive textual explanations. The book also features an artist's chronology of artistic activities at the end. Comprehensive in content and beautifully printed, it faithfully reproduces the essence of the original works, making it an excellent resource for art enthusiasts to appreciate and study. In terms of creative philosophy, Quan Shanshi belongs to the strictly defined generation of oil painters in China. Prior to his generation, the concept of "oil painting" as an independent art form was not clearly understood among artists. It was largely overshadowed by the notion of "Western painting" as an opposing concept to Chinese painting. The artists of Xu Beihong's generation sought to answer these questions: What are the unique characteristics of "Western painting" and "Chinese painting"? How can "Western painting" be adopted to reform China's decadent traditional art? How can the integration of Chinese and Western painting traditions create a new art for the era? Quan Shanshi's generation, however, had to directly confront the inherent issues of "oil painting," particularly the technical aspects of its expression. On one hand, fifty years later, oil painting gained considerable recognition in China's cultural policies, eliminating the need to constantly debate with Chinese painting to assert its legitimacy. In an era where all art was a tool, oil painting revealed its nature as an independent art form (rather than just a medium). Thus, the technical characteristics of this independent art form became an urgent issue to be addressed. On the other hand, due to the singular foreign policy of China after its founding, oil painters struggled to access authentic European artistic resources, creating a gap between the Chinese oil painting community and the language of oil painting. It can be said that the issue of expression and technique—i.e., "how to paint true oil painting"—has long troubled them. However, once "oil painting" shed its label as "Western painting" and its role as a carrier of Western meaning and value, it found it difficult to resist the call from another direction. As an imported art form, oil painting had to integrate with China's indigenous artistic traditions to take root in the Chinese context. Behind this integration lies a conflicting mindset and a sense of identity anxiety that Chinese oil painters faced when dealing with the two major painting traditions of the East and West. This anxiety has accompanied the relatively short history of Chinese oil painting and has deeply permeated the creative philosophy of artists like Quan Shanshi. In 1954, Quan Shanshi was sent to the Soviet Union for study. As he boarded the train to the distant land, speeding toward the northern snowfields, he was unaware that in the far distance, he would encounter it countless times.