The earliest Chinese paintings with historical records are Chu and Han silk paintings, and all the silk paintings found are from Changsha, Hunan. There is no direct relationship between the ends of more than 2,000 years, but when Hunan Fine Arts reflects on how it became a great province of Chinese Gongbi painting in the 80s of the 20th century, it still traces the historical reasons back to Chu and Han silk paintings. The flourishing of contemporary Hunan Gongbi painting is long and thin with history, close and thick with reality. The reason for this is, firstly, to prove that "Gongbi should be with the times", embody the aesthetic concept of the times, and reflect real life; Second, because of the emphasis of the times, the artist's individual meaning and role are obscured. "First" decided that Hunan Gongbi painting should be the mainstream of modern figure painting. The second indicates that Hunan Gongbi painting lacks the ability to develop sustainably, and its prosperity is only temporary. Commentators call it the "Hunan Gongbi Painting Phenomenon".
One of the reasons for the formation of the phenomenon of Hunan Gongbi painting in the 1980s is that the Fine Arts Department of Hunan Normal University, which is an important town of higher art education in Hunan, has a first-class Gongbi painting education system in the country, and thus forms a large enough attraction for groups of students to enter the territory of Gongbi painting. It was here that Zeng Jingxiang received a standardized education in fine brushwork. Like most Hunan Gongbi painters, Zeng Jingxiang was also keen on Gongbi figure painting when he was young, but as time went by, as he grew older, and due to the external reasons of the fading of the smash hit "phenomenon", Zeng Jingxiang became more and more inclined to Gongbi flower and bird painting. Because of the mainstream advantages of Gongbi figure painting, there are very few generations of Hunan Gongbi painters who are devoted to flowers and birds. Among the painters of the older generation, only Zou Chuan'an persevered with stubbornness against the current. It is precisely because of Zou Chuan'an's unswerving determination that Mo Gaoxiang and Zeng Jingxiang, who were a little later in the generation, were able to plunge into the creation of Gongbi flower and bird paintings for decades and became the representatives of the second generation of Hunan Gongbi painters.
The essence of art lies in expressing the personality of the artist, and the artistic personality has thus become the core content of artistic value. The formation of an artistic personality is a very complex process. There are not only long-term waves and steel, but also the artist's own unique life and artistic experience. In this way, the artistic personality, which is the core content of artistic value, is a natural growth process that is gradual, fuller and deeper. It is not a deliberate pursuit, nor is it a result of existence. Only in this way can the artistic personality formed truly have its uniqueness and real artistic value.
An in-depth study of the artistic characteristics of Zeng Jingxiang's Gongbi flowers and birds shows that several aspects are crucial.
First of all, Zeng Jingxiang's artistic creation spans the two stages of New China, and the artistic concepts of these two stages are not only inherited, but also have obvious differences. As a cross-generational painter, Zeng Jingxiang's artistic aesthetic concepts are mixed. Specifically, on the one hand, his artistic concept is rooted in the realist tradition of "foreign teachers make changes", attaches importance to observing the ever-changing nature and all creations come from sketching. On the other hand, he consciously absorbed the development and changes of aesthetic concepts in the new era. Specifically, it is to consciously express oneself in artistic creation, rather than depicting nature purely objectively; It is no longer a simple reproduction of the true vividness of nature, but an attempt to express one's subjective consciousness in all aspects of composition, color, and rhyme. As a result, an aesthetic feeling of naturalness, vividness and formal meaning is compatible.
Second, because of his theoretical consciousness beyond that of ordinary painters, Zeng Jingxiang not only spent a considerable amount of time on art theory research, but more importantly, he tried to use the results of theoretical research to guide his creative practice, so as to consciously and firmly follow the path of painting flowers and birds without following the crowd.
Third, Zeng Jingxiang, who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Hunan Normal University, has many advantages as a painter in the normal system, that is, he has received a relatively comprehensive training in various types of painting, and has studied both Chinese and Western paintings, so that he can naturally learn from each other in his creation. In particular, his long-term insistence on the juxtaposition of Chinese painting and watercolor painting makes him even more different from the so-called pure Chinese painting. This difference is especially reflected in his emphasis on the importance of color in the painting of flowers and birds, and his self-improvement in integrating certain shapes, compositions, and tastes of modernism into his creations. As a result, his painting art has a richer aesthetic information. Not only has it distanced itself from its predecessors, but it also shows that it has both personality and intriguing characteristics compared with its predecessors.
Fourth, Zeng Jingxiang is an academic painter, not only because of his academic background, but also because he has more than 30 years of experience in higher art education. There is no so-called academic school in Chinese contemporary art, but there is a clear difference between academic painters and non-academic painters. Zeng Jingxiang is a standard academic painter. He wrote the book "Chinese Gongbi Flower and Bird Painting Techniques" based on the results of his long-term teaching and creative practice, which has become one of the best textbooks of its kind in China. The so-called academic painter is both a teacher and an artist. As a teacher, it is expected that all excellent artistic achievements should be passed on to students without personal prejudice. As an artist, I can't help but choose and be biased. The academic painter is trying to unify this seemingly opposing contradiction. It shows richness in artistic personality and uniqueness in eclecticism. It is said that Zeng Jingxiang is a standard academic painter, which is particularly evident in his Gongbi paintings of flowers and birds. The aesthetic concept of the times, whether it is the breath of life created by foreign teachers, or the subjective expression of modern consciousness; Traditional technical language, visual forms, and even the dense, virtual and real inscriptions of literati freehand paintings, or the strong colors and heavy colors of Western paintings, are all integrated into his Gongbi paintings of flowers and birds in an orderly manner.
In China's civilization system, "doing nothing" and being able to "do nothing" is the highest level of human wisdom. The characteristics of the times of life and the natural temperament have jointly shaped Zeng Jingxiang's unintentional and unassuming personality. But the times, life experiences, temperament and aura, plus decades of diligence and perseverance. Flowers bloom naturally from the character of not being the same as others. Such differences are scattered in his works of various genres. Since the Song Dynasty, lotus has entered the field of gongbi flower and bird painting. For thousands of years, I don't know how many people have painted it. On the basis of inheriting the predecessors, Zou Chuan'an's lotus flower integrates the modern image feeling, which can be said to have pushed the Gongbi lotus to the pinnacle of surpassing the predecessors. Zeng Jingxiang, who is also a Xiangnan Gongbi painter and is not too far away in age, has painted a feeling that is obviously different from Zou's lotus. In the work "Lishui Hibiscus Late Brighter", the painter makes full use of the black and white contrast of the prints, and uses the rich variations of Chinese ink to present the beauty of the lotus in Zhu Ziqing's "Moonlight on the Lotus Pond". The lotus leaf gradually pushes from the ink color in the distance to the pale inky gray white in the foreground, which perfectly expresses the artistic conception of Zhu Ziqing's prose, and presents a pure and clean beauty in a different way. It is impossible to have such a visual experience in the real lotus pond, and the lotus leaves under the moon will never be as noble as in the painting. Only Chinese literati with the concept of "perfecting the ancient and the modern" can have such a spiritual yearning. In this painting "Lishui Hibiscus Late Brighter", Zeng Jingxiang uses visual experience as the form to directly express the personality characteristics of pure and noble beauty.
This sense of purity and beauty is evident in many of his works. The flowers in "Midsummer", the chrysanthemums in "Warm Wind", "Sunny Days", and "Light Yellow and Pale White Dyeing Autumn Beauty", the moon flowers in "Brewing", the flowers in "September Little Yang Spring", and even the canna leaves in "Red Cloud" and the palm leaves in "The Misty Moon" were all treated white by the painter. This kind of painting of flowers and birds with gray and white as the main visual sense is unprecedented. The aesthetic effect of this kind of visual experience is, first of all, the visual sense of light, which is rare in ancient and modern Gongbi flower and bird paintings. The second is the noble and untainted spiritual sentiment advocated by the Chinese literati. Although it is a traditional concept, it can only be seen in the painting of flowers and birds in Gongbi in the pen of Zeng Jingxiang. In order to highlight the visual sense of light and the sense of emotional nobility, the painter made full use of the ink effect of Chinese painting and the contrast of white. The feeling of ink painting adds the meaning and atmosphere of literati freehand painting. This actually hints at Zeng Jingxiang's extension to freehand flower and bird painting.
Zeng Jingxiang's painting of flowers and birds, in addition to highlighting the sense of light and nobility, is also highlighting the red color full of life and vividness. If gray and white symbolize nobility and lightness, red is the pursuit of brightness and heaviness. The representative works of this flamboyant and heavy red style are "Summer Breeze" and "Drizzle Talks for the Next Year". The red flowers and red leaves in the two paintings are obviously derived from nature, but they are more concentrated and intense than natural beauty. In both works, strong contrasts are once again used. In order to highlight the showy and heavy red flowers and red leaves, Zeng Jingxiang borrowed the blank space of freehand painting. On the white paper of nothingness, the visual tension of red is intensely amplified. This kind of artistic aesthetic orientation, which emphasizes visual tension and impact, undoubtedly comes from the reference to modern and contemporary art. However, unlike contemporary art, which is visual-for-visual, Zeng Jingxiang's red flowers and red leaves convey the life and vitality of nature. Because it transcends nature itself, it makes the viewer swell up with the impulse and vitality of life, that is, human beings.
Whether it is a noble and light white or a bright and heavy red, the visual sense produced in it is rare in the previous Chinese Gongbi flower and bird paintings, which is of course the so-called modern aesthetic concept in Zeng Jingxiang's paintings. However, the noble and light white color is in line with the spiritual sentiments of the traditional Chinese literati, and the connection between the bright and heavy red color and the rhythm of natural life has also been the eternal theme of Chinese painting for thousands of years. This kind of free travel between the past and the present, which is both traditional and modern, is Zeng Jingxiang's most distinctive artistic personality, and in fact, he is also a painter.
(The author of this article, Li Puxing, is the vice chairman of the Hunan Provincial Literature and Art Critics Association)