 oday, though the new-style artists in Chengdu didn't unite as a group with a distinctive guideline as the artists in Europe and particularly in countries like France and Italy of the early half twentieth century did, their living circumstances and social situation have invested them with much of the same quality and spiritual connections.
Actually, to understand Chengdu's new art we should look back on what happened over 20 years ago.
In 1979 and 1980, people in Chengdu viewed the rich-colored and plainly composed works "Fight Across The Changjiang River" and "We Once Sang Such a Song," by He Duoling. Only people having some idea of Chinese history knew what the rich color and plain composition mean at that time: human nature, sentimentality, melancholy feeling and truth.  While before that, the rich color, let alone the obscure elements and the common composition, meant political fault and reactionary ideology of the artist, which in turn meant the likely deprivation of personal freedom.
At that time, young people and many viewers sighed with emotions in front of He's works, and the depth of that emotion is beyond the experience and understanding of people in present times. Unfortunately, these two works are now nowhere to be found; we only know the second work was bought with only several hundred renminbi, or about $36, quite a few years ago.
Long before 1979, He had been a heavyweight personage among young artists in Chengdu, who frequently discussed the content, technique, thought and color in his paintings, and even described his personal character and lifestyle.  Later, He painted "Spring Wind Has Awakened," (1982) and "The Youth" (1984), which have had lasting influence. As a result, the artist's place in contemporary Chinese art history has been solidified. Even though He Duoling had been more or less under the influence of Andrew Wyeth, either in technique or spiritual quality, Chinese viewers still recognized his precious emotional content and beautiful sentiment. He's influence is almost permanent and doubtless, and for intellectuals born in the 1950s, his art acquired ideological values.
Zhou Chunya did not paint works of profound thought and political interest; he did not acquire even the thinking and the serious academic attitude He acquired. Zhou showed a very perceptual talent and a free spirit. He had studied in the Fifty-Seven Art School, a non-regular art school opened in the harsh political years. Later, he studied at the famous Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. Zhou's art began with the simple life of Tibetan people, which showed his personal character.  Later, Zhou and He shared the same studio at an art academy when painting works, but their styles are distinctively different. Many young artists and many friends who served as models for the two artists frequented that small studio, and they listened to music, discussed art, and shared the experience and appreciation of western art styles in painting albums.
From 1986 to 1989, Zhou studied at Kassel in Germany, and western art had exerted almost direct influence upon him. After he came back to China, his works displayed heavy colors and volumes, which related more or less to the art traditions of northern Europe. Zhou had visited many rural areas in Germany, and he had lasting interest in the actuality and commonality of life. In this respect, he is consistent with the spiritual atmosphere of the whole times. Like He, Zhou's art represented the expectations of that time: the pursuit of actuality and simplicity; only He inclined to represent the actuality's being hurt while Zhou represented more of the 'harmony' of the actuality. Nevertheless, both men could not help expecting to represent their true inner worlds.
Into 1990s, Zhou began to acquire an interest in traditional Chinese art, particularly in landscape paintings produced during the North and South Song Dynasties and Ming Dynasty. He believed that art should be concerned about more than the so-called 'unique styles' of art; and in the art by ancients, people could experience some permanent spiritual essence. In terms of that, the thought embodied in avant-garde art serves more to pave the way for a free expression of our spirit, and the free expression should end up as the key to art. Consequently, his works on the subject of the 'black root' - his dog, his works about 'stones' and human bodies, and his works showing flowers are all very free in brush strokes, which frequently remind us of traditional Chinese paintings and writings and produced in our mind scenes of ancient people painting works. Thanks to his place and character, Zhou has become an organizer of young artists' meetings and exhibitions, and his flexible character and amiable attitude have brought him many friends.
 Up till 1992, Zhang Xiaogang's art had not attracted wide attention. And as early as in the 1980s, the expressionism of depression and hurt had been strong features of Zhang's art, which came as a result of the artist's personal character and his life experience. His works with ghost representations are spiritual records of his illness, and the cruelties and wounds represented in many of his works produced in 1989 have something to do with the social political situation at that time. Only after 1993 when he painted works about the Chinese family did Zhang begin a systematic and repeated understanding of history and memory. Zhang had a depressive nature and a desire for freedom, and he naturally expected to live in a free atmosphere. When he opened a 'small bar' with money he earned by selling his paintings, it inevitably ended up a favorite meeting place for young artists, including musicians and writers in Chengdu area. Actually, this kind of life originated in western countries, but Chinese intellectuals also had a tradition of drinking together to discuss their poems and writings. So Zhang's small bar as an environment ended up the activity center of new-style artists. And in Shaziyan where the small bar is located, many young artists rented or bought apartments, so that they could expect to find a relatively free space of their own in an irreversible business society.
Zhang was a classmate of Zhou Chunya at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Art, and his art life remained always in a moderate and plain state before 1994 when the sale of his works enabled him to live a financially free art life. Zhang's unique image and style turned him into a famous artist.  In the eyes of Chinese art critics, Zhang's art was still a symbol of the time, a repeated, ridiculous and dull time image, and an irreversible time image. The influence Zhang acquired in the 1990s had something to do with his frequent appearances at some international exhibitions and with successful sale of his works. Naturally, the historical image of apathetic eyes has ended up a mark - it is the stereotype of Chinese people in a specific historical time, even though years later Zhang did not believe his paintings contained such things.
As the earliest artist influenced by He Duoling, Guo Wei developed a realistic and reserved style. Around 1990, Guo attempted to escape from He's influence by practicing surrealism. But it was only after 1994 that Guo's new style finally began to take shape. The red human body resembling animal forms suggested a kind of life reality. Living for so long a time in Chengdu, Guo had been apparently affected by the climate and the cultural history of this city: the slow mobility, leisure atmosphere, overcast sky and non-sharp life attitude are all characteristic of this city. As the new style artists remained a minority in this city, Guo could only keep communicating with He Duoling, Zhou Chunya and a small number of peer artists of the same interest,  and it was such communications that had triggered off Guo's imaginations.
In early 1990s, Guo communicated closely with Shen Xiaotong, and Qi Haizhou who is now teaching at Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts; after all, they were classmates. Later, Guo moved his studio to Shaziyan and began to live in that relatively artists-concentrated area and would naturally visit that small bar. Both the red and the gray human bodies were produced in such an environment. Guo was gentle and moderate, and had acquired constant inspirations in his slow-paced art life. His brother Guo Jin always held joint exhibitions with him so that people habitually called them "Guo Brothers." But Guo Jin spent almost all his painting hours in Sichuan Fine Arts Institute where he works, and Guo brothers' art styles are also quite different.
When studying at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Shen Xiaotong had developed sensitivity to popular ideas, so much so that he acquired a habit of getting involved in popular cultural activities time and again, such as musical performance. Actually, Shen's artistic sensitivity had been demonstrated in his works produced before and after his graduation.  Later, the style and content of his works had been changing constantly. In early 1990s, the content of his works showed confusions and crises, which turned out to be the very expression of his anxiety brought about by the novel changes of society after he left college. An important feature of the 1990s was the further loss of the functions of art's instrumentalism, and in the meantime, the commercialized social revolutions also affected artists' life and attitude. In the 1980s, artists regarded painting as an image statement of ideological changes, which then would remind us of futurism, Dadaism, surrealism, and the implicated 'revolutionary' meanings in various exhibitions. As a result, the 1990s was believed to be a time when ideals and goals got lost, and artists became confused about the choice of subjects, about what to represent and how to represent. After going through such a confusing times, Shen began to form a unique style in 1998; then his delicate colors and calm picture images formed a sharp contrast with his underlying red colors several years ago.
Like what we have seen frequently in art history, conflicts often arose between artist groups because of their personalities and other reasons. Shen time and again led a lonely life due to his personal reasons and misunderstandings in life. Even though he still went to the small bar, he would be absent from the artist circle periodically. In a time, he always painted alone in his studio, and when a relaxing atmosphere recovered,  he would still take part in some informal gatherings. Such a complicated, conflicting but gentle living atmosphere formed a sharp contrast with the atmospheres of art circles in Beijing, Wuhan and other cities. In Chengdu, no violent conflicts would arise because of their special life experiences or their different art viewpoints and even different viewpoints of life, and the frequently emerging conflicts would always tend to dissolve as the time elapsed, and this is an interesting feature of art circles in Chengdu.
Chen Liang, Wu Xiaohang and Qiu Anxiong all graduated from different colleges; because of similar life experiences, the three artists often communicated with each other and discussed issues of art and life. Chen graduated from Zhejiang Art College, but some reserved cultural atmosphere of the inland city of Chengdu led him to think about some subtle issues. For example, he paid quite a lot of attention to the embarrassing state of the psychological distance between people; as a result, the content of his composition ended up microscopic and gloomy, without the bright and lively tones of northern artists. Of course, almost all artists in Chengdu shared a feature of gray colors; only they had different understandings of and applications for different levels of gray colors.
Wu Xiaohang did not plan to be a professional artist from the outset; she only playfully painted on the canvas when keeping company with Qiu Anxiong who was painting. One day, she dotted out an object in the blue area of the canvas - at the beginning it was like a chair, and the obscurity of that object seemed to be set in the blue water, which produced a very interesting visual effect. Later, she changed that object logically into the shape of a fish, and the subtle and obscure changes invested the picture image with original sense of beauty. In this way, Wu caught the attention of Zhang Songren - a famous art trader. It can be argued that Wu's painting art came as a result of her calm and casual talent.
Qiu Anxiong's original painting images looked extremely heavy, and soon he found that the images and representations in the works of those successful artists all had some conspicuous uniqueness, so he began to reconsider his painting language. Undoubtedly, Qiu also underwent a process of being influenced by other artists, and in his exploring journey he also went to study in Germany for a time. Gradually, he developed his heavy and clustering images into tender shapes that seemed to be about to disappear when sucked by some kind of force, and the space in the picture became mysterious and attractive; the colors are still heavy, but now they are richly fluid and full of change. A special point position in soul turned out to be a visible beauty under the brush of this young artist. Qiu Anxiong and Wu Xiaohang now moved to Shanghai.
Xie Nanxing and Yang Mian are all artists graduating from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and then teaching at Southwest Jiaotong University. Judging by his works produced in different times, Xie's experience of life was always full of tragedy. In his works of recent two years, tragedy did not acquire the [conventional sense of beauty any more, and the hurt feeling looked more intrinsic and absurd. In 1999, Xie took part in Venice Biennale and this had convinced him of the significance of his work. Actually, Xie, a frequenter of the small bar and the Day and Night bar, liked to discuss art related questions with other people, and this had enabled his works to reveal more of the ideological background. His picture composition looked casual, the tone was completely gloomy, and the character's situation and status were absurd and groundless. Moreover, this sense of absurdity was so conspicuous even in a still-life scene.
Yang Mian's paintings looked relaxing, without the least of heavy representation; however, under the pressure of the seemingly casual paint of heavier colors, the light ad images still troubled our mind. Yang's art inspirations had something to do with the commercialized social environment he himself was set in, and artist himself still expected to express the inexplicable living reality and its impact on himself through perceptual representations.
Perhaps because of the far too harsh life in Chongqing, a city that is only 3-hours drive from Chengdu, and more probably because of the charm of the environment of Shaziyan that is located to the south of Chengdu, Zhao Nengzhi and He Sen moved from Chongqing to Chengdu and began their new life of art. They seemed to believe such an environment was able to bring them not only harmonious friendly atmosphere, but also more opportunities for exhibition and sale of their works. These two artists are steadfast in their art pursuit and their initial styles were characterized by strong expressionism. Only in recent two years did they began seriously and carefully changing their inner impulse that was likely to lead to expressionistic styles to the attitude of calm description so that they could pursue their unique individual styles.
Chengdu has been regarded as one of the few cities where new style artists concentrate. We can be sure that, years of the constant influence brought about by the Fifty-seven Art School in the 1970s and the lives and activities of the important artists graduating from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts have constantly inspired the young artists living in the cities of an increasingly prosperous commercial society. Even today, Chengdu is still a city of art scenes' concern, and art critics and art dealers are constantly showing desire and interest to get to know this usually overcast city.
|
