laitimes

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Xu Hualing is a professor at the School of Chinese Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and one of the representative painters of contemporary gongbi figure painting. Xu Hualing has a strong interest in painting since childhood, her artistic path began with the in-depth study of traditional gongbi painting, and gradually formed her own unique artistic style, she uses silk as the medium, with delicate soft and resolute lines to outline the emotional world in her heart, she abandons the limitations brought by the technique, and follows her own feelings in the image of an independent and tenacious woman depicted by Jin Yong. Since Xu Hualing went down to the south of the Yangtze River for the first time and walked in the streets and alleys of the ancient city, she suddenly had a real sense of the martial arts world she had imagined since she was a child.

"The breath of the rivers and lakes permeated my eyes, and my feeling of tradition was activated."

Xu Hualing created more than 50 "Chivalrous Girls" in one go, which may be a happy expression of her desire to create in the martial arts world that she has always been obsessed with.

The girl is the object of Xu Hualing's repeated depictions, Xu Hualing captures the beauty of the different stages of the girl's life, and also projects her own emotions and perception of the outside world. Xu Hualing chooses silk, a material close to the texture of the skin, and paints in the way of blending, the brushstrokes are delicate and nuanced, and the picture is hazy like an illusory dream.

In series such as "Incense", "Ruo Light", "Still Beautiful" and "No ·", the flowing hair, the floating weightless back, the details of the body parts, and the overlapping transparent phantoms are like the dreams of a girl's floating youth. On the film-filled "Chivalrous Girl", Xu Hualing painted bright red lips and nails for the chivalrous girls, mixing chivalry and love, the market and the rivers and lakes, the images of the times and personal memory. In her recent work Seeing the Mountains, Xu Hualing traces her gaze back to the form and composition of traditional paintings since the Jin and Tang dynasties, depicting different forms of the female body.

Painting girls seems to be the secret of Xu Hualing's transcendence of time gravity, time never acts on Xu Hualing's appearance, and the years add to her only a broader and deeper dabbling in traditional culture. With a girl's heart and chivalrous dreams, she comes and goes freely between the past and the present, and her body is as light as a swallow.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Incense 4-1, 160×100cm, silk, aqua, 2004

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Incense, 160×100cm, silk, aqua, 2012

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Incense 2017 No.4, 160×100cm, silk, aqua, 2017

Draw martial arts children, happy and revenge

"Not only is Jin Yong a fan, but also often has a chivalrous heart"

Xu Hualing is a fan of Jin Yong, she captures a glimpse of Jin Yong's novels, Shaw Brothers movies, and TVB martial arts dramas, and paints the martial arts picture in her heart with understatement.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 03, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2006

Interviewer: In the early "Chivalrous Girl" series, you depicted the world of martial arts in your mind, what attracted you to martial arts?

Xu Hualing: When I was a child, I read a lot of Jin Yong's martial arts novels. I don't look at who is good at martial arts, I will quickly skip the fight scenes when I read them, and I am more interested in men and women falling in love.

There are many points in Jin Yong's novel that I think are interesting. For example, in the nocturnal culture, the characters in the novel wear night clothes to go out to inquire about the news, fly to the roof of the house with light skills, uncover a tile, and a small beam of light shines from underneath, which hits the person's face.

For another example, when I was heavily poisoned and healed, I slapped my palm on my back and spit out a mouthful of blood, and I suddenly felt that the injury was not painful, but rather beautiful. There are also masters of Go games, secretly competing martial arts. and a set of martial arts moves, which are secretly combined with Zhang Xu's wild grass brushwork and the like.

The food culture in Jin Yong's novels also attracted me, Huang Rong is a master of cooking, and Hong Qigong is a gourmet...... Jin Yong's book is quite all-encompassing.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 45, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2006

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 29, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2006

Interviewer: Which of the female characters did you draw in this series? Do they have a corresponding prototype in Jin Yong's novel?

Xu Hualing: Most of the stars I painted based on video materials, such as the familiar early TVB actors such as Weng Meiling and Huang Xingxiu, who carried my memories of the characters.

What I paint is a picture of various memories mixed together, which is the rivers and lakes of my own imagination, and also carries the collective memory of the post-70s generation of TVB martial arts dramas. Since the 80s of the 20th century, I have been able to see Jin Yong's martial arts dramas filmed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and I am particularly impressed by Huang Rihua and Weng Meiling's version of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", Andy Lau and Chen Yulian's version of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and so on.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 20, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2007

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 46, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2006

I draw more of a specific scene than a specific person.

For example, the heroine is a female celebrity in the boudoir, and suddenly hears that her lover is injured, and in shock, the embroidery needle pierces her finger, and a drop of blood drops on the silk cloth in her hand.

Or, a hand in the lotus pond quickly swept by, plucked a lotus flower, and disappeared in an instant.

Moreover, the camera suddenly switches, the wind blows the reeds by the water, and the scene of the sea and the sky in the distance.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 26, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2007

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 22, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2007

Interviewer: Who is your favorite female character in Jin Yong's novels? If you could, would you like to travel to her?

Xu Hualing: My favorite character is Cheng Ying, I appreciate her principles of dealing with the world, not fighting or grabbing, and very dignified. She loves Yang Guo, but she has super self-esteem, and her attitude towards feelings can be taken and put down, and she has a sense of boundaries.

Every character portrayed by Jin Yong is quite real, with advantages and disadvantages. There are things I like about the female characters, but I can't feel the sense of substitution for one character. Now that I think about it, it may be the male perspective of Jin Yong's novels, and some of the male protagonists are a bit "Jack Sue". Whether a male character is attractive or not may be measured by several criteria in the martial arts world: force value, character and appearance. There are a lot of male protagonists who I think are extremely annoying, and there are also many girls who like them.,I can't quite accept that.。

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Chivalrous Girl 44, 38×30cm, silk, aqua, 2007

Drawing them is like painting yourself

"Every stage of life has its own different beauty"

The girl is the object of Xu Hualing's repeated depictions at different stages, Xu Hualing expresses the intimate experience of the female body with a natural feel and aura, and describes the girl's floating youthful dream. The delicate brushwork conveys the temperature of the senses, allowing people to escape into a deep dream between the real and the unreal.

Interviewer: What was your initial inspiration for drawing girls?

Xu Hualing: I've always been interested in representing women, painting them as if I was painting myself.

What struck me first was the beauty of the peeling marks of the female figures in the Dunhuang murals, the beauty of the colors, the shapes of various hands, and the beauty of the bodhisattva form in the Tang Dynasty. When I graduated from university, I started from the figures and gestures of the Mogao Grottoes, and painted a series of female bodies intertwined with the imaginary cloud patterns and water patterns, which was the initial prototype of my painting of a girl.

I originally created the "Incense" series purely to express my feelings about the female body.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Incense 7-3, 160×100cm, silk, aqua, 2005

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Incense 2014N0.8, 100×121cm, silk, aqua, 2014

Later, in the "Still Beautiful" series, I began to integrate some of my feelings as a woman in society, the things I encountered at work, and the pressures I faced. When I paint women, I don't have too many rules and regulations, everything is based on my own feelings.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Still Beautiful 5, 240×130cm, silk, aqua, 2008

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Still Beautiful 6, 240×130cm, silk, aqua, 2008

Interviewer: How have you changed in the way you express yourself at different stages?

Xu Hualing: I'm not interested in grand narratives, I want to paint the people and things around me.

When I graduated from graduate school, I wanted to paint the daily life of the girls' dormitory, but in the process of painting, I felt that the scenes such as washing and dressing were too much like sketching, so I gradually began to simplify. First the background is simplified, then the characters are simplified, then the female body is depicted, and finally the human body is kept only.

The first girl's drawing I drew was of a girl lying on a piece of cloth that felt like she was sketching as she worked with the lines of the human body.

When I painted the second one, I didn't want to draw a traditional curvy woman, so I removed the lines of the human body.

Different from the traditional Gongbi painting and coloring techniques, I use a similar boneless painting method, which is closer to the feeling of the female body when dyeing, which is indeed very different from the previous gongbi painting.

So I drew a girl standing upright, only taking a back, and when zoomed in, it looked a bit like a monument, which was the feeling of a woman in my heart, very natural, not pleasing and distant.

The material of silk was chosen because it is very close to the texture of the skin, and has a body feeling and temperature.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Ruoqing 1, 240×130cm, silk, aqua, 2014

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Wakalight 4, 240×130cm, silk, aqua, 2016

In the past few years, some nostalgia for the past began to appear in my works, and I drew a few girls in plaid skirts and white shirts, which is the feeling I remember in the eighties and nineties of the last century.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Treading the Rain and Seeking Plum Blossoms, 116×100cm, silk, aqua, 2018

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Outside the Window 1, 150×97cm, silk, aqua, 2018

Interviewer: You originally said that you were not interested in flowers and plants, but now you have also started to draw some flowers and butterflies skeletons, does this change still follow a certain creative line?

Xu Hualing: When I paint these works with flowers and plants as a carrier, I am still painting women, but I have changed the medium.

Originally, I was not very interested in colorful flowers, but during the epidemic, the whole person's lifestyle has also changed, and after buying flowers once, I started to buy flowers non-stop, and when I went out for a walk, I would also look at trees and flowers in the yard.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"In the Mountain", 100×160cm, silk, aqua, 2020

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Room 41, 54×77cm, silk, aqua, 2014

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Growth 10, 27×41cm, silk, aqua, 2023

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Back Garden, 42×52cm, mixed media, 2008

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Pink Twilight, 120×118cm, aqua on silk, 2024

The skull was drawn earlier, more than ten years ago: the girl's hand was pressed on a skull, and the skull was clean and plain in color.

Later, a few years ago, I went to Kyoto to live for more than a month, and I drew a few pictures of particularly small skeletons and butterflies. Japan people have a worship of death culture, like the understanding of cherry blossoms and bushido, which is very different from our understanding of death.

Skeletons and butterflies seem to me to have a kind of commonality, both have a cycle from birth to death, from beauty to ugliness in the worldly sense.

In the past, I thought that the Song people's painting of flowers and birds had reached a peak of aesthetics, and I didn't think that I could paint anything new, so I never touched this subject. During the epidemic, I passively appreciated a lot of things that I wouldn't pay attention to before, and felt that flowers and plants could also be painted, starting from inconspicuous vines, painting dry branches and leaves, and withered rose petals.

At that time, I was in a gloomy mood, so I found Osamu Dazai's novel to read. She was born in an aristocratic family, and after the war, her faith collapsed, all kinds of blows followed, her life was down, and her life slipped down step by step, but in the shattering and loss of beauty, she could still see a glimmer of light.

I feel that painting these flowers and plants has a sense of connection with the fate of the heroine, and there are very few perfect things in life, most of them are imperfect.

Activated traditional context

"Seeing the mountains is the mountains, and seeing the water is the water; Seeing mountains is not mountains, and seeing water is not water; See the mountain is still the mountain, see the water is still the water"

This quote in "Five Lantern Huiyuan" talks about the threefold realm of Zen meditation.

Xu Hualing's long silk "Seeing the Mountain" adopts this perspective of looking at the world. However, she uses the female body as a carrier, and from a distance, it is between the green and green landscapes, integrating into different forms of the female body.

In the hazy visual flow, the exploration of form can be traced back to the tradition of green landscapes since the Tang Dynasty.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Seeing the Mountain, 98×461cm, aqua on silk, 2024

Interviewer: Do you still recall learning to draw as a child?

Xu Hualing: I started painting when I was 8 years old, and I first learned to draw shrimp, crabs and peonies in Qi Baishi at the Children's Palace. In retrospect, the teacher's method of teaching children at that time was a bit like the painting class of the university for the elderly, teaching the freehand of Chinese painting. Maybe because it doesn't take much patience, after a few strokes, the color and richness of the picture will come out, and it can quickly present a relatively complete appearance, which looks quite simple.

After attending the High School Attached to the Academy of Fine Arts, he began professional painting training, laying the foundation of Western painting, mainly learning sketching and color, which was the Western concept of modeling, mainly based on the Soviet system at that time. As an undergraduate, I studied Chinese painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which was more about training in techniques, absorbing the modeling concept of Chinese painting, and realizing the great difference between China and the West. At that time, I was not particularly interested in Chinese painting. Although I also saw a lot of ancient paintings, including Dunhuang and Datong, I always felt far away from me. Catching up with the vigorous development of Chinese contemporary art, the various Western art concepts I came into contact with had a greater impact on me.

Interviewer: What were some of the cultural and visual resources that really influenced you during your college years?

Xu Hualing: I went to the Department of Chinese Painting in college, but my circle of friends is mainly from the High School Affiliated to the Middle School, and most of them are doing contemporary art. I also came into contact with a large number of Western contemporary art concepts for the first time, and I remember that Fang Lijun's iconic bald and smiling face was already very recognizable at that time, which brought me a great aesthetic impact.

During my undergraduate studies, I read a lot of Japan ukiyo-e. Japan is deeply influenced by Chinese culture, including early Zen paintings, but gradually developed painting styles with Japan characteristics, such as ukiyo-e, which are more technologically crafted and more acceptable. In terms of shape, color and line, traditional Chinese painting emphasizes charm and subtlety, while ukiyo-e is more direct.

Gerhard · Richter had a great influence on me, and what first attracted me was his series of photographs, deliberately blurred images, the alienating experience of visual inclarity, and a reality that was difficult to touch. He also paints landscapes and abstractions, and some of his works are close to oriental aesthetics in style, and they are all quiet and introverted. I admire very much that an artist can do whatever he wants, and that he can completely break through his original self at different stages.

There is also Luci·o Fontana, who wields a knife on the canvas with his straightforward expression, breaking the two-dimensional space of painting and entering a more dimensional space, which is also destructive and formal beauty.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Gerhard · Richter's photo painting "Himalaja Himalayas"

Oil on canvas, 200×160cm, 1968

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Lucio · Fontana, Spatial Concept, Waiting, 1964, painted on canvas

24 1/8 × 19 5/8 吋 (61.3 × 50 minutes), Lucio ©Fontana/SIAE/DACS, London 2019

Interviewer: When did you really become interested in traditional Chinese culture?

Xu Hualing: The first time I went to Jiangnan around 2006 was when I really touched my heart and soul about traditional culture.

Because I grew up in the north since I was a child, all my imagination of Jiangnan comes from martial arts novels. Walking into the real streets and gardens, the traditional context was activated in front of my eyes. My interest in traditional culture has grown as I have grown, and my gaze has been constantly wandering, and the types of types I absorb are also very diverse, and I am not limited to a specific category.

When I was in the attached middle school, I took a Chinese painting class, and I once copied the "Ten Thousand Pine Winds", but I didn't like it at the time, thinking that the ink color of this work was heavy and very old, and the schema had a very heavy and oppressive feeling. But a few days ago, I was looking for a modeling reference for a new work, and I looked at a lot of works, and finally I chose this "Ten Thousand Pine Winds".

In recent years, I have seen more ancient paintings, and I have unconsciously changed.

In the past two years, I have been obsessed with ancient buildings, and ancient buildings have brought a more complex feeling. I made a few trips to Shanxi last year, staying for six or seven days each time. There are too many ancient buildings in Shanxi, so I made a big map of ancient buildings in Shanxi, and I plan to use my spare time to take a good look. Before each departure, a route map will be made, a central point will be selected, and a circle will be walked around, and the stay time will not be too long, and you will not be able to absorb it if you see too much at one time. So much so that now, when I think about a building, I always start with the situation I visited.

Interviewer: What are some of the most memorable visits?

Xu Hualing: One is the Jindong Temple in Xinzhou.

There's a janitor farming nearby, and if you want to go in and see, ask him to open the door for you. The courtyard of Jindong Temple is not big, there are several buildings of the Song Dynasty, Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty in it, the terrain is from low to high, unevenly arranged, and there is no pattern to see.

Walking to the back of the hall on high ground, you can touch the dougong of the building as soon as you stretch out your hand. It is not like the solemn feeling of ordinary temples, but it has a casual atmosphere of life. You can see the murals of the Ming and Qing dynasties inside, and some parts of the plaster have almost fallen off, and it can't be said how exquisite the skills are, but the atmosphere of the whole temple is quite harmonious.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

In September 2023, Xu Hualing was at the Jindong Temple in Xinzhou City

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Corner hall in Jindong Temple (Northern Song Dynasty)

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

The bucket arch on the side of the Three Sects Hall (Ming Dynasty).

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Remnants of frescoes on the west wall of the Manjushri Hall

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Remnants of frescoes on the east wall of the Manjushri Hall

In various small temples in Shanxi, you can often see that all kinds of gods and goddesses are offered in it, which is very interesting.

The other is Hongfukuji Temple. The road in the past does not seem to have changed much from the road of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin in the past. The peculiarity of this temple is that it is hidden behind a fortress, and at that time, in order to resist foreign invasion, a high earthen wall was erected in front of the temple hill, and the temple was hidden behind the wall.

There is also a Fuwen Temple in the ancient city of Zhengding, Hebei. Zhengding is of course the most famous is Longxing Temple, the temple of the Song Dynasty Mani Temple, many tourists all year round. The temple is very deserted, there are no people, the halberd gate of the temple is a very rare building of the Yuan Dynasty, there is a feeling of furniture in the Ming Dynasty, the style is simple, there is a kind of ancient and solemn atmosphere, especially in my aesthetic point.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

In October 2023, Xu Hualing photographed the Yuan Dynasty halberd gate of the Confucian Temple in Zhengding Mansion, Hebei Province

The fairy demeanor of Wei and Jin

"Even labor scenes such as killing pigs and slaughtering sheep can be poetic"

Tradition is a river that can be traced over and over again.

As she grew older, Xu Hualing's aesthetics and preferences for traditional culture also kept wandering, and she used to feel distant cave murals, Buddhist statues, silk embroidery, landscape paintings, ancient buildings, and ancient artifacts...... In turn, there was a connection with her heart.

Interviewer: Which stage of Chinese aesthetics impressed you the most?

Xu Hualing: In fact, the preferences are changing at each stage.

But I've always liked the Song Dynasty, and it was a pinnacle of aesthetics. I like Song people's sketches of flowers and birds, and Song porcelain. Song porcelain especially prefers the subtle and simple temperament of Ru kiln and Ding kiln.

Of course, the categories of art that have reached great development in each era are different. The divinity and sense of ritual of Gao Guyu in the Shang Dynasty also touched me. At first, I liked the shape of the Northern Qi Dynasty, which was beautiful to the extreme, and then I preferred the Northern Wei Dynasty statues with a more tough temperament, and then the Sui Dynasty statues, which were difficult to see at first, became more and more tasteful.

Recently, I have been fascinating the literati of the Wei and Jin dynasties and the poetry they presented in their literary and artistic works.

Not long ago, I went to see the "Silk Road Camel Bell" exhibition at the Minsheng Art Museum, and the most impressive thing was a few portrait bricks of the Wei and Jin dynasties, painting the scene of killing pigs and slaughtering sheep. It is not implemented, but it is not stained with fireworks, and it feels like the slaughtered sheep is about to feather.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Painted sheep slaughtering mural bricks, Wei and Jin dynasties, camel bells ringing - Silk Road Art Exhibition, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum

It is not uncommon for the scene of the literati and scholars to play the qin with a fairy aura, but I am really impressed by the fact that this kind of bearing can be painted by killing pigs and slaughtering sheep.

There is also a silk fabric from the Wei and Jin dynasties in this exhibition, which is different from the neat atmosphere and magnificence of the silk fabric of the Tang Dynasty next to it. The demeanor of celebrities, fairy spirit and poetry, and the silkworm-like use of Gu Kai's spring silkworm completely fit the imagination given to me in the Wei and Jin dynasties.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"The Female Historian" (detail) Eastern Jin Dynasty, Gu Kaizhi, Song Dynasty facsimile, Feng Jieyu blocking the bear scene ©, collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing

Speaking of lines, the use of lines in the Song Dynasty "Shangshan Sihao Huichang Nine Old Two Pictures" in the collection of the Liaoning Museum, in which the use of lines is continued from the "Female History Atlas", and the developed lines are more detailed and stronger, which is the kind of force that is tied to the paper. Later, in modern times, Pang Xunqin once painted a group of dancing white figures on paper in the Tang Dynasty, which is the most able to inherit this aesthetic style among the modern white figures I have seen, and the lines have their own ancient atmosphere.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"Shangshan Sihao Huichang Nine Old Picture Scroll" (detail), Song, anonymous © Liaoning Provincial Museum

Interviewer: If you could travel back in time, which dynasty would you most like to go back to?

Xu Hualing: The Song Dynasty, to be more precise, the Northern Song Dynasty, this is probably the answer of most artists. It was an era of relative freedom in the arts, with a flourishing cultural freedom, a thriving commodity economy, an abundant nightlife, and the ability for women to remarry. As an ordinary person who has some preferences for literature and art, it is also very convenient to travel back in life.

Interviewer: In your opinion, what is the core of Chinese aesthetics? What is the essential difference from Western aesthetics?

Xu Hualing: The topic of Chinese aesthetics is very grand.

From the source, China is a relatively stable agrarian civilization, with relatively little foreign influence, and worships patriarchal authority and respect for tradition. Chinese aesthetics emphasize more seriousness, subtlety and introverted elements, and more self-reflection from the heart.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Pages of Yinzhen Cultivation and Weaving Atlas · Classics, Qing, silk, colored, 39.4×32.7cm,

This is one of the tillage and weaving atlases. This painting depicts the Fujin of Yinzhen (Prince Yong) in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing ©

The maritime civilization represented by the West, such as ancient Greece culture, is more of an outward conquest and spatial expansion. Whether it is trade or war, it needs to be completed by young adults, and without this respect for patriarchy in Chinese culture, we often see patricide plots in ancient Greece mythology.

In short, Chinese culture pays more attention to inheritance, and the development of Western art is more of a replacement or break.

At the beginning of the year, I went to the Forbidden City to see the "Exchange Exhibition between Ancient Civilizations of China and West Asia", and found that going back to the past, the state of divinity and chaos in Chinese and Western civilizations, simplicity and atmosphere have something in common, and it was not until later that they gradually had their own different directions.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"Historical Encounters: Ancient Civilizations of China and West Asia" at © the Palace Museum, Beijing

In traditional Chinese culture, words such as "Tao", "Qi" and "Rhyme" often appear in the mysterious, but in fact, for plastic art workers, such words are implemented, which are modeling, structure, momentum, color, etc. For example, we can understand Qi Baishi's flowers and birds and Huang Binhong's landscapes without any obstacles. Qi Baishi paints a shrimp, you can feel the existence of water without drawing water, and there are relatively some obstacles for foreigners to understand, and I think this is also an innate cultural difference.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Qi Baishi shrimp, 103×34cm©, Tsinghua University Art Museum

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Huang Binhong's landscape, 131×67cm©, Tsinghua University Art Museum

Interviewer: At this stage, is the technique still very important to you?

Xu Hualing: Technique has always existed, and it is an element that can support the extent to which you can complete the work and is related to the quality of the work. For example, if I want to touch on some subjects that I would not have touched before, the path of expression will change, and the technique will have to be adjusted and partially revised accordingly.

Technique, for me now, may be a more appropriate word for "feel". I won't stress too much about this line, for those of us who have been painting for many years, there will be a kind of measure and temperature in the hand, and what kind of degree a line should reach, when painting, the hand will naturally follow the brain.

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"Swords Girl-Xu Hualing", 荷兰阿姆斯特丹Kohler Muller画廊现场, May 2008

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"Guan Ju: Xu Hualing Solo Exhibition", Tang Hong Kong, 2015

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"Ruoqing: Xu Hualing Solo Exhibition", view of Today Art Museum, Beijing, April 2016

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

"Scent Xu Hualing's Recent Works" 美国旧金山,南海艺术中心 展览现场,2019.10

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Xu Hualing's solo exhibition "Seeing Water", the scene of the Grand Future Forest House Corridor in Taipei, May 2023

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Five solo exhibitions in a group exhibition, ABCDE, November 2023

(Source: Green BAZAAR Bazaar Good Life)

Artist Profile

Dialogue with Xu Hualing: The Activated Traditional Context

Xu Hualing, born in 1975 in Heilongjiang, China, is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Chinese Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2000, he received a bachelor's degree in Chinese painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2003, he received a master's degree in Chinese painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2020, he received his Ph.D. from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2003, his work "Incense No.5" won the Academic Innovation Award of the first "Light of the Academy" exhibition of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2004, his work "Dragonfly" was selected for the 10th National Art Exhibition and was collected by the Zhejiang Art Museum, and his work "Incense No.8" won the gold medal of the first National Youth Chinese Painting Annual Exhibition of "Lichang Cup" and was collected. Since 2001, it has participated in Beijing, New York, San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, Nanjing, Shanghai, Oldenburg, Tokyo and Sydney. His major solo exhibitions include "Still Beautiful" in 2007, Beijing, Los Angeles. 2008 "Xu Hualing – A Chivalrous Woman", Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2015 "Guan Ju: Xu Hualing Solo Exhibition", Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong. 2016 "Ruoqing: Xu Hualing Solo Exhibition", Today Art Museum, Beijing. 2019 "Incense: Xu Hualing's Recent Works", Nanhai Art Center, San Francisco. He has published "New Gongbi Literature Series - Xu Hualing Volume", "Contemporary Gongbi - Xu Hualing" and "Case Study of Famous Contemporary Chinese Painters - Xu Hualing Gongbi Figures".