Dialogue: Wang Mingming, Consultant of the Chinese Artists Association, Librarian of the Central Museum of Culture and History
Painters and poets go to an elegant gathering that spans time and space
"Outside the Poems of Poetry - Wang Mingming's Ancient Poetic Paintings and Albums Exhibition", which was postponed due to the epidemic, is like a paradise, bringing a coolness to Beijing in the heat of the heat.
Walking into the hall, reading poems and viewing paintings, people forget the time, as if the world has never changed, the world is worth it.
This exhibition is Wang Mingming's first solo exhibition after he retired from the Beijing Academy of Fine Arts. It displays hundreds of ancient poetic paintings albums he created in more than ten years. Following the poetry in the paintings, it can be seen that he has a deep understanding of traditional Chinese culture and Chinese painting. hold fast.
Beiqing Art Review: When you walk into the exhibition hall, you feel that people are quiet. In recent years, everyone has rarely traveled, and yearns for the mountains, waters, forests and springs. When you enter the exhibition hall, you can see this kind of atmosphere and hear the beautiful Chinese classical music. Music, the impetuous heart is quiet, people feel a kind of traditional beauty.
Wang Mingming: This is the feeling I want to convey to the audience.
Chinese painting pays attention to bookishness, and it is very important to get rid of anger and impetuousness.
This set of albums was created with ink and rice paper from the Qing Dynasty, and I cherish it very much.
The biggest feature of using this kind of paper and ink is that the smudge layer can fall on the paper very clearly at each pass, and it can also remove impetuousness and anger, and the picture will produce a calm atmosphere.
The requirements for materials in Chinese painting are as particular as China's food and tea culture, but the fast food produced by the current rhythm of life has spoiled everyone's sense of taste, and there is no subtle difference, which is different from the use of ink in large-scale paintings The resulting impact does not feel like the mystery of the five colors of ink.
And I always pursue the stillness and bookishness of the fine brushwork in my paintings.
This exhibition is the first exhibition after my retirement. After retirement, I basically did not participate in outside activities. I wanted to calm down and concentrate on my creation.
In this exhibition of the ancient poetic painting series, I propose "entering the tradition", which seems to be the exact opposite of the innovation that most people are talking about. In fact, innovation and tradition are not contradictory.
In the history of world art, Chinese painting has an important position, it needs not only innovation, but also inheritance.
The 5,000-year-old context of Chinese culture has not been interrupted. Generation after generation, people have inherited, innovated in inheritance, and added their own personality, cultivation and experience to form one peak after another.
I have been thinking about how to inherit and enter the tradition.
Beiqing Art Review: Poetry and painting have been closely related since ancient times. There are many excellent works. Creating ancient poetic paintings is like a huge self-challenge. What do you think of this challenge?
Wang Mingming: Chinese Tang poetry and Song Ci Yuanqu have a special status in the long history of world culture.
Many painters in the past dynasties have expressed poetic intentions, and Chinese painting pays attention to the combination of poetry and painting, and uses painting to present the artistic conception of poetry.
But I think the painters of each era paint differently and have different traces and influences of the era.
This set of 100 ancient poems and poems in the exhibition strives to use traditional painting methods, including comprehensive techniques of figures, landscapes and calligraphy, especially the presentation of the artistic conception of poems, which is also a challenge to me.
Albums are also a unique form of expression in Chinese painting. The painters of the past dynasties have left fine works of ancient poetic paintings. For example, in the 20th century, Mr. Lu Yanshao created the fine works of Du Fu's poetic Baikai album.
In the past 40 years, I have continuously painted some albums, among which ancient poetic paintings are the main theme. From 2006 to 2008, I painted more than 20 paintings, and I continued to paint some in 2014. I have time in the past three years. , only to complete it, a total of 100, the time span of twelve years.
Beiqing Art Review: Why can you persist in creating the same theme for more than ten years?
Wang Mingming: Over the past few decades, I have mainly focused on administrative work, and my creation has become an "amateur". Therefore, within the limited creative time, I insisted on sending my creations to my feelings, not following the trend or being controlled by commissioned paintings , maintain their independence.
This set of ancient poetic paintings Baikai album contains rich content such as flowers and birds, landscapes, characters, calligraphy, etc. Each content requires continuous learning and understanding, not overnight.
This is also the biggest feature of Chinese painting. Only with the continuous accumulation of artists can the connotation become richer and richer. Kung fu must be done in places that others cannot see. This is why almost every series lasts for more than ten years.
Beiqing Art Review: How did you choose these hundred poems?
Wang Mingming: First of all, this poem must be able to be included in the painting and suitable for expression.
Many poems have rich connotations, but they have no image, or the image is not suitable for drawing, so they will not choose.
Another aspect is the choice of content. I didn't choose anything that was too sympathetic, too excited, or the theme of monarchs and ministers.
The theme of the tendency is the ancient literati's longing for natural mountains and rivers and the expression of life taste.
Beiqing Art Review: Images are created from words. How did this transformation come about?
Wang Mingming: For example, Wang Huanzhi's "Climbing the Stork Tower", the Stork Tower that I can see now is a modern reconstruction. I didn't find it. I thought it was beautiful, so I took a photo and kept it for data.
I saw at the scene that the building was actually far away from the Yellow River, and the description in the poem could not be felt according to the actual appearance, so I thought of the source of the Yellow River I had been to, and combined the melody of the Yellow River with the Stork Tower. .
There are real mountains and rivers in the painting, but there is no certain rules for the composition. It can be constructed according to the needs of the picture.
So Chinese painting is the experience of life plus imagination.
Beiqing Art Review: Some works are beyond my imagination of poems, such as Li Zhiyi's "Fortune-telling Acacia", in my mind, "I live at the head of the Yangtze River, and you live at the end of the Yangtze River" is a long river, but in your picture instead Characters are the most important.
Another example is Zhang Xu's "Remaining Guest in the Mountains". The important "guest" in everyone's imagination is actually just a small corner of the picture.
How did you come up with these images?
Wang Mingming: I actually thought a lot about "Bou Shou Zi: Acacia". If I want to make the characters small, I don't think it is poetic. This poem focuses on emotions, so the characters in the painting are in the middle shot, and the characters raise their heads and look into the distance. , and the river is the viewer's imagination space, so as to show the spirit of poetry.
After repeatedly deliberating on the poetic meaning of "Staying Guests in the Mountains", I splashed color and ink on it to express its wetness and the meaning of "into the depths of the clouds and also on clothes".
territory.
This poem cannot draw lines, it must show humidity and artistic conception through the picture.
But the scenery is not enough, the characters appear in the lower left corner of the picture as the painted eyes.
Sometimes a poem takes a long time to brew, so if you don't think about it, you put it down first.
For example, when I created "Chibi Fu" in the past, I wanted to go to Chibi, Huanggang, to have a look at the earliest, because generally, painters have to experience life first, go to the local area and see them before painting, but I thought about it for two or three years. Imagination is done.
When I went to Chibi two years after the painting, I said, "Fortunately, I didn't go before the painting", because compared with Su Shi's time, the landscape has changed, and Su Dongpo already has some artistic exaggeration in his poems. If you paint according to what you see, It limits my imagination.
Therefore, experiencing life is not the only way to create. Life experience and daily thinking will also provide support for creation. Artists should use more imagination.
Beiqing Art Review: How do you view the relationship between the characters and the scenery in the picture?
Wang Mingming: The idea of the unity of man and nature is the wisdom of the ancient Chinese, and it is the grasp of the relationship between man and nature.
I constantly coordinate and balance the relationship between people and nature, people and scenery, flowers and birds, landscapes and characters in the picture.
In the unity of contradictions and opposites, it is a big principle to make the whole picture harmonious.
Beiqing Art Review: The ancient poetry is not only a sense of picture, but also contains some artistic conceptions that can only be understood.
Wang Mingming: When you have a sense of picture, how do you express it?
I have been comprehending what is the most important point in Chinese aesthetics.
I think it is "virtual". Chinese painting is the opposite of Western art. Western art pays attention to how to shape this image well, while Chinese painting emphasizes where there is no brushwork. The two ways of thinking are different.
The ancients often used "virtual" very skillfully in poetry to achieve a higher level.
In this batch of works, I have emphasized the expression of the virtual environment. The virtual and blank are the core elements of traditional Chinese painting, which are both subjective and objective.
Influenced by Western art, Chinese painting in the 20th century emphasized the shape and tension, filling all the pictures, thinking that this was an innovative expression, but lost the artistic conception of Chinese painting that "there is nothing to conquer".
In the virtual energy habitat, the blank space is the sublimation of the subjective meaning.
When I painted Liu Yuxi's "Autumn Poems", I made a few drafts, how to express "a crane in a clear sky brings the poetic sentiment to the sky"?
In the end, I put the autumn tree at the bottom of the picture, only the red leaves on the treetops express the meaning of autumn, the picture is 90% blank, a crane in the upper left corner is flying upwards, and the inscription is at the bottom right, giving people a sense of ethereal and openness .
Li Bai wrote "I never get tired of looking at each other, but Jingting Mountain is the only one." I painted the distant mountains very imaginary, leaving a space for the viewer's imagination.
If I use the traditional method of landscape painting to paint the distant mountains, I feel that the mountains are too close, and there is no room for imagination.
The correspondence between each picture and poetry requires careful consideration, which not only expresses poetry, but also strengthens the characteristics of freehand painting.
Lu You's word meaning "hairpin phoenix, red crispy hand", after several ideas, I finally gave up the performance of the characters, focusing on the emptiness of Shenyuan, giving the viewer more imagination and aftertaste.
Nowadays, people like to watch videos. Some people suggest that I also animate the pictures and make them into animations. I don’t agree with this method. It will make people lose their imagination.
Beiqing Art Review: What is the difference between a poet's imagination and a painter's imagination?
Wang Mingming: The artistic conception of poetry is poetic emotion. The poet's emotion and imagination are infused into the poem. My painting intent strives to express poetic emotion, which is the core.
In addition, after the transformation of reality and reality, my poetic paintings are not simple descriptions of people and landscapes.
Beiqing Art Review: It can be said that the final picture was created by you and the poet.
Wang Mingming: Yes.
How to understand the poet's experience and emotions, these are all things that I need to consider, and I need personal cultivation and accumulation to slowly dig deeper.
Beiqing Art Review: How do you understand "the pen and ink should be with the times"?
Many Chinese paintings have been improved, and a group of painters such as Zhou Sicong have been very successful in deconstructing Chinese paintings. Do you have such an attempt?
Wang Mingming: Now is not that era.
Teachers Lu Chen and Zhou Sicong first proposed the innovation of Chinese painting, which was not satisfied with the current situation at that time.
We just opened the door in the 1980s, and everyone was very new to Western art. Lu Chen and Zhou Sicong made a lot of deconstruction attempts.
Although they were among the earliest in innovative artistic practice, they had a bottom line.
Shi Tao said that "the pen and ink should be with the times", but in fact he is also innovating on the basis of inheritance.
Shi Tao's Baikai album is based on Li Gonglin, and his paintings are so fine, can we today achieve it?
Everyone is talking about Shi Tao's innovation, but traditionally, no one can surpass him. It's just that later generations took this sentence out of context and strengthened it, and everyone was busy with "innovation".
Beiqing Art Review: At the moment when big paintings are popular, why do you create works in the form of albums?
Wang Mingming: My set of 100 ancient poetry and lyric paintings is 71cm×30cm (two square feet) in size. I asked myself to draw a big atmosphere in the small paintings.
From the perspective of traditional art forms, hand scrolls and albums are two very special forms in the inheritance of more than a thousand years.
The viewing method of hand scrolls and albums requires close, slow turning, careful scrolling, and meditation to experience the works.
When viewing small paintings of one or two feet, you also need to look at them calmly, and appreciate the paintings and poems to sense and taste them carefully.
Today's Chinese paintings are created in the space of art venues, and there are many large-scale paintings, which have become popular. On the contrary, small-scale paintings cannot be painted by painters, and there are fewer paintings that can withstand fine works.
I often force my students to draw small paintings, training that level of subtlety.
Beiqing Art Review: Entering the tradition, small and subtle, you seem to be on the road of anti-fashion all the time.
Wang Mingming: Sometimes it is a good thing not to follow the trend in artistic creation. In terms of artistic language, it is very likely that it will be overwhelmed by the torrent of the times.
Artists still have to have personal beliefs and perseverance. You can only see how big Qi Baishi's paintings are. The old man has been painting on such small cases all his life.
Beiqing Art Review: Do you have any new creative plans?
Wang Mingming: We are preparing a series of Chinese gardens.
Garden creation is not a simple sketch, I will also add a lot of my own accumulation and imagination.
Text/Reporter Shi Yi