Wu Guanzhong's Artistic Career Yong Zhang1,*
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 572 Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education (ICADCE 2021) Wu Guanzhong's Artistic Career Yong Zhang1,* 1 State Specialist Institute of Arts, Rezervnyy Proyezd, D.12, Moscow, 121165 Russia *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Combining with Wu Guanzhong's learning experience, this paper analyzes Chinese oil painting art characteristics in different periods, and the method of integrating traditional Chinese ink and wash painting language with the western modern design language in the aspects such as modelling, colour and composition. Wu Guanzhong successfully used western painting method to show the Oriental artistic conception, and formed unique composition views and forms. With the use of concise and simple colors and free-writing lines, the painter's personal emotions, thoughts and standpoint and deep understanding of life can be expressed. On the basis of in-depth research on the essence, connotation and thought of Chinese and Western art, Wu Guanzhong found the "junction" of the integration of Chinese and Western art. Keywords: Wu Guanzhong, Hangzhou Academy of Art, Ink and wash painting, Oil painting, Integration of Chinese and Western art. 1. INTRODUCTION Wu Guanzhong entered Hangzhou Academy of Art to study Chinese and Western paintings. In the Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), the People's school, he received direct guidance from teachers Artist, Art Educator, and Professor of the Academy such as Li Chaoshi, Fang Ganmin, and Pan of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University, used to Tianshou. Li Chaoshi and Fang Ganmin are both be an executive director of the Chinese Artists teachers who have returned from studying in Association, a member of the Standing Committee France, but their styles of painting are different. of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Both Li Chaoshi's elegant style and Fang Ganmin's Political Consultative Conference, and a rigorous style left a deep impression on Wu Correspondence Member of the French Academy Guanzhong. Under the careful guidance of Pan of Arts. He pays attention to sketching and Tianshou, he copied a large number of traditional advocates aesthetic thoughts of formal beauty and Chinese paintings. Pan Tianshou's creative spirits abstract beauty. His works are fresh and unique, embodied in his paintings, as well as the fully showing the artists' keen sense of nature. He is momentum and style of the paintings, have become committed to the exploration of the nationalization his lifelong wealth. He was not directly taught by of oil painting and the modernization of Chinese Lin Fengmian, the principal of Hangzhou Academy painting. He has made great achievements in art of Art, and Wu Dayu, the head of the Western creation and art education, and enjoys a high Painting Department, but he liked the free reputation in China and foreign countries. expression of Lin and Wu in art. With the study of oil painting and traditional 2. WU GUANZHONG'S LEARNING Chinese painting in Hangzhou Academey of Art, AND TEACHING EXPERIENCE the necessary conditions for the integration of Chinese and Western paintings are provided. And Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010) was born in an then, Wu Guanzhong has a rigorous modeling ordinary farm in Yixing County, Jiangsu Province. foundation, Western modern art concepts, and His father was a rural elementary school teacher. systematic knowledge of traditional Chinese His mother was born in a rundown family and painting and good sketching habits, which will raised silkworms and rice. Although she was contribute to Wu Guanzhong's future artistic illiterate, she was gifted with aesthetics. In 1936, development. Lin Fengmian's concept of Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 340 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 572 "integrating the Chinese and Western art" guided In the autumn of 1950, Wu Guanzhong returned Wu Guanzhong's artistic development. Wu from studying abroad. With the recommendation of Guanzhong admired Lin Fengmian's artistic Dong Xiwen, he began the teaching career at the proposition of "Integration of Chinese and Western Central Academy of Fine Arts. He introduced paintings" and chose the art path of "Integrating Western painting masters and classic works to Chinese and Western paintings", which laid a solid students, taught the essence of Western modern art, foundation for the development of art and even the and conveyed his own artistic propositions, feelings formation of unique painting styles and ideas. and formal rules, which was different from the mainstream art of the Chinese painting circle at that Wu Guanzhong likes the richness of color and time. However, the New Chinese painting circle at emotional expressiveness of western modern that time regarded Western modern art as a scourge. painting art. In 1946, Wu Guanzhong got the Wu Guanzhong's artistic views did not conform to opportunity to study in France at public expense the policy of all art serving politics at that time, and with excellent grades. In 1947, he went to study in he was criticized during the rectification movement France and entered the Ecole Nationale Superieure the following year. des Beaux-Arts. J. M. Souverbie was the mentor. Souverbie is an important member of the Paris In 1953, Wu Guanzhong was transferred to the School of Painting, an important painter in Paris Department of Architecture of Tsinghua University around the 1940s and 1950s, and also the to teach sketch and watercolor, far away from the academician of the French Academy. He is similar mainstream of fine arts and the literary and artistic to Picasso and Braque in artistic conception. In the circles. Working at Tsinghua University, he did not creation, he pays attention to the balance of the give up any opportunity to paint, painted a large picture in French classicism painting, which has a number of watercolors, and explored the form of profound impact on Wu Guanzhong's subsequent painting in watercolors. He was unwilling to accept creations. The figure paintings he learned in France the ideological standards of aesthetics at that time, were even criticized to "uglify workers, peasants and switched from figure painting to landscape and soldiers". He was a "bourgeois intellectual" painting. Landscape painting was not the who had returned from studying in a capitalist mainstream subject at that time. Without touching country, and his body was full of toxins. Therefore, politics, he could explore his own artistic path with for many years after Wu Guanzhong returned to peace of mind. China, he had to create comic strips, propaganda In September 1956, Wu Guanzhong was posters, and New Year pictures in the style of transferred from Tsinghua University to the newly socialist realism. established Department of Fine Arts, Beijing After returning to mainland China in 1951, he Normal University of Art, as the director of the oil soon encountered the literary and artistic painting teaching and research section. In 1964, he rectification movement and was criticized as a was transferred to the Central Academy of Art and "bourgeois formalist fortress". During his study Design to teach basic painting courses. He spent abroad, he created a large number of works, some most of his artistic life at the Central Academy of of which were selected for the Spring Salon and Art and Design. While teaching at Tsinghua Autumn Salon Exhibition (Paris). When his University and Beijing Normal University of Arts, overseas study is coming to an end, Souverbie it coincided with the promotion of literary and art encouraged him to return to his motherland and workers experiencing life deeply. It was common explore and develop his own art based on for painters to go out and sketch from life, and Wu traditional Chinese culture. However, Wu Guanzhong began his sketching career from then Guanzhong's classmates who fled to Taiwan or on. In 1970, he and the teachers and students of the stayed in Europe did not suffer from the ideological Academy of Arts and Crafts were transferred to Li unification movement of socialist realism art Village, Huolu County, Hebei Province for labor creation from the Communist Party of China. They reform. Due to the constraints of the time, he had to maintained continuous free development on their use the villagers' dung baskets as easels, thus giving respective artistic roads. Therefore, Wu Guanzhong birth to the so-called "dung-basket" school of once said in his later years: "If there is no reform painting. and opening up in the 1980s, I would be a marginalized painter." 341 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 572 3. WU GUANZHONG'S ARTISTIC landscape painting. He explored the form beauty in CHARACTERISTICS OF OIL landscape paintings and organized and choses PAINTING subjectively the pictures, instead of staying on the description of nature. Wu Guanzhong's oil painting art is of high In the 1960s, Wu Guanzhong did not have many aesthetic and academic value, and has played an oil paintings, but he drew a number of landscape important role in inspiration and promotion of works by wading through the mountains and rivers contemporary oil painting creation and the and surpassing the strange peaks. He has made development of artistic concepts in China. Wu great breakthroughs in artistic exploration, showing Guanzhong inherited Lin Fengmian's artistic the changeable composition and free and flexible proposition of "Integrating Chinese and Western brushwork. The colors are thin and transparent, paintings" and devoted his life to exploring the with the blooming effect of watercolor. The localization of Chinese oil painting. Wu Guanzhong representative ones are the Tibetan series of emphasized feeling and expression, insisted on paintings, such as "The Streets of Lhasa (2)" going deep into life and sketching.