Xin Dongwang - Today's College Artists

Author: Xindewang (Illustrator)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: One of the ideological characteristics of modern Chinese painting is the overall acceptance of "realism." To say "overall" means that Chinese art, guided by mainstream ideology, has taken "realism" as the guiding artistic principle for creation and evaluation, with the portrayal of the living conditions of the working class being the focus of "realist" painting. Over the decades, the vast majority of painters have identified with this view. Whether inclined toward tradition or innovation in art, people have given positive evaluations or had favorable attitudes toward "realism," at least maintaining respect. Farmers have always been the main subjects of Chinese painting. Whether depicting arduous labor or pure leisure, farmers often embody an ideal spiritual realm in artworks. The ideal life of traditional literati—fishing, hunting, farming, and studying—is essentially different aspects of farmers' lives. In our painting creations, many works have indeed focused on the lower strata of society. However, in modern Chinese painting, farmers are often a concept, symbols embodying certain ideologies. For example, one type represents the suffering masses of old China with a spirit of resistance, while the other represents the happy people of new China with a forward-looking vision and heroic demeanor. After the 1980s, the situation changed. The figures in Luo Zhongli's Father and Cheng Conglin's Snow in December 1967 were neither particularly happy nor heroic. Even in these works, the images of ordinary people were still idealized symbols. They ("Father" and the "Red Guards") appeared on the canvas due to some profound and noble ideals or a critical spirit rooted in such ideals.
After the 1990s, painters began to engage in in-depth, independent social and cultural reflections, no longer acting as interpreters or annotators of mainstream ideology. Writers, film directors, and painters were all allowed to bring commonplace figures from daily life into their works. Liu Xiaodong depicted urban ordinary people with an unadorned brushwork, portraying the aimlessness and boredom of city dwellers who were well-fed but spiritually starved, in a very straightforward manner. Xindewang, on the other hand, focused on a different state of existence—the outsiders who appeared strange to city dwellers, the individuals who left their hometowns for survival. Whether it was the migrant workers in Cloudy Turning Sunny Tomorrow or the girl in The Outside World, Xindewang showed full understanding and sympathy for them.
Because of this, viewers can taste irony and mockery in Liu Xiaodong's works (e.g., White Fatso, Roasting Rats), while when encountering Xindewang's works, they feel more the weight of life. These are ordinary people who are neither "beautiful" nor "profound," but they would never (or never think to) treat life and existence with frivolity. When we are about to be overwhelmed by the flirtatious or pretentiously profound figures flooding the media, we find a sense of relief in the gravity and confusion of the figures in Xindewang's paintings.
In the history of modern Chinese painting, there have been depictions of impoverished rural migrants, such as Wang Yuwei's The Abandoned People and Yu Ben's Waiting for Employment. Of course, the creative environments and motivations of these predecessors were completely different from Xindewang's, but in terms of social ethics and breaking through popular painting conventions with genuine feelings, they shared the same orientation and equal value. It is worth noting that these predecessors paid more attention to historical backgrounds, so Waiting for Employment is presented as a scene, a social phenomenon. Xindewang, however, focuses more on individual lives within specific historical contexts. His works are notable for their unforgettable individual figures and their spiritual states.
While focusing on farmers entering the city, Xindewang has also painted many ordinary people who are not farmers. His recent work Breakfast was awarded the gold medal at the "10th National Art Exhibition" by unanimous decision of the judges. Although opinions differ on its formal treatment, the painter's straightforward portrayal of the living conditions of the lower strata of contemporary Chinese urban society evokes endless reflection and contemplation from the audience. Similar to "migrant workers," the painter perceives "loss" and "aspiration," "indifference" and "warmth," "longing" and "confusion" coexisting in them. He sees them being "marginalized" in modern urban life but does not diminish the dignity of their individual lives.
When browsing through historical figure paintings, we can feel the harmonious coordination between the images recorded by painters in different historical periods and the painting techniques they used. As painting developed into a specialized skill, painters became increasingly adept at wielding the techniques they mastered, so the techniques themselves also became an aesthetic object with personal colors. For paintings, there is an actual consistency between the painter's mastered skills and the subjects they choose to depict. This consistency, apart from the sameness of historical atmosphere and cultural soil, also includes a "temperament" and "personality" that can be achieved through the painter's personal exploration: the gentlemen and ladies in Sargent's works and their elegant, unrestrained brushwork; the wounded, vast earth in Kiefer's works and his indescribable surface textures.
Xindewang seems to have never pursued the refined, unrestrained, or vigorous, seasoned flavors that Chinese literati painters admired. His brushwork often carries an unmasked clumsiness and heaviness. He says his brushwork for depicting unemployed migrant workers is "derived from the feeling of using a trowel to smooth a wall." This is clearly not a dramatic metaphor for the painter's own technique but reveals the consistency in temperament and "expression" between the figures in his works and his painting method. I cannot explain the source of this consistency, but I associate it with the shared perspective of the painter and the laborers who are far from their hometowns in their view of life, as well as the painter's empathy for their inner world and circumstances.
For Chinese literature and art, the lower strata of society (especially farmers who left their hometowns) always evoke historical associations. People perceive these figures based on the foundation of traditional cultural accumulation. Extending from this cultural psychological accumulation is the historical task of contemporary painting: to find the connection between portraying contemporary figures and their traditional psychological heritage while expressing the painter's personal feelings and intentions, as well as the traditional spirit of Chinese painting. Creating novel images of the lower strata of society with a simple yet personalized realistic style is Xindewang's historic contribution to contemporary Chinese painting.