"Rivers and Clouds in Paintings - Collection of Wu Guanzhong"

Author: Wu Guanzhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: Labor in solitude creates value; Lin Fengmian's long-term diligent cultivation has yielded new varieties of crops. In the early 20th century, many Western painters gradually became dissatisfied with the heaviness and solidity of oil paintings. In his later works, Cézanne sought a loose effect using light brushstrokes and thin layers of paint, often leaving the canvas unfinished. Japanese and Persian paintings appeared to them as novel expressive techniques. Matisse, Derain, and Utrillo strove to shed the burdens of heavy, sticky oil colors and rough canvas, pursuing a fluid, free, and spontaneous spirit. Oil paintings, often adjacent to clay and stone sculptures, fell in love with a new lover—light music. Lin Fengmian welcomed their new joy and married it to the land of ink and wash. The blue-dressed women, white-dressed women, "Bao Lian Deng" (The Treasure Lamp), Miao girls, and birds by the flowing water that Lin Fengmian painted on Xuan paper are the fusion of the rhythmic sense pursued by Western modern painters and the Eastern musicality. However, he modestly said: "I am just stir-frying mixed vegetables." His lines sometimes resemble dancing silks, tearing silk, or sudden rain, yet at other times, they are incredibly tender. Of course, there are those who only favor the "" (: the marks like water dripping from a roof) and find Lin Fengmian's crisp lines unacceptable. The beauty of dance relies on practice, the beauty of singing relies on practice, and the beauty of form, line, and structure in Lin Fengmian's paintings also relies on practice. Painting ninety horses in a day is just an ordinary example. To perfectly express the conception and aesthetic sense he sought in a painting, he often worked late into the night, laying out many finished works on the floor, and then sleeping. The next morning, as soon as he woke up, he would observe the batch of paintings and select one or two, while the rest were torn up, or all of them were destroyed! When I read novels or essays, I usually read them only once, and the same goes for movies and plays. But I enjoy rereading beloved poems and never tire of them, nor do I tire of watching performances by actors like Zhou Xinfang. Perhaps it is because there is more beauty in them—the beauty refined through arduous technical labor. The need for art appreciation arises precisely because art has indispensable entertainment value. I love to constantly view Lin Fengmian's paintings and never tire of them!
Sculpture and architecture primarily deal with space, while painting primarily deals with area. The formation of a painting mainly depends on the division, arrangement, and treatment of the surface area, that is, the overall effect of the composition and the interdependent relationships between its parts. The larger the area of a part in a painting, the greater its role and influence. This differs from an image, which can be drawn isolated on a white sheet of paper, and the size of the blank space around the image seems irrelevant. In traditional Chinese painting, many works blur the distinction between images and paintings, with blank spaces left for poetry, inscriptions, imperial seals, or collectors' notes on the works' history and experiences. It must be admitted that this has not fully entered the strict scientific realm of composition. Pan Tianshou was absolutely rigorous in this critical issue. When composing, he focused primarily on the blank spaces, and the position and length of his inscriptions were entirely part of the painting's structure. Matisse once famously said: "There is no part in a painting that can be considered dispensable. If it does not play a positive and beneficial role, it must inevitably have a destructive one." P54