Page 39 - The Pioneers, November 26, 2016 Hong Kong
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beyond the purely formal beauty of Cezanne's work. Cezanne sentiments. It is also deeply rooted in the perceptions of
simplified and then reconstructed his scenery, emphasizing beauty gained during his rural life, from which evolved his
vertical and horizontal spatial extension in tightly structured unique and innovative creative vocabulary. Such a vocabulary
compositions that can seem slightly confined (Fig. 3). Wu served to present in art his actual experiences of the time,
Guanzhong, however, by means of brushstrokes and colours but also drew on the essence of the Chinese landscape
that vary from dense to diffuse, expresses depth, distance, painting tradition, a tradition not limited by the distinctions
and openness within the flat spatial structure of the canvas. made in the West between abstraction and figuration. As
He injects a natural, intuitive sensibility into the work, and he once wrote, 'In oil landscapes there are mountains, rivers,
his feel for the resilient life force of the land conveys its trees, houses....expressing these concrete images is not
flourishing vitality to the viewer. Wu Guanzhong surmounts too difficult. But it is the abstract forms of the organizing
the restrictions of the flat canvas through his precise grasp structural relationships between these concrete objects—
of line, colour, and structure, and in each minute area of the that is, the upward or downward motion they produce, the
painting we find spaces where the imagination can roam. squares, circles, curves, and straight lines, and warm or
His brushstrokes in oil seem to possess a concentrated cool colors—and their responses to each other, their degree
power that adds body and life, making real the relationships of concentration or expansion, and so on, that are actually
between scenic objects, as if there were another hidden crucial in determining whether a work is beautiful or not, or
dimension beyond his flat canvas. Brushstrokes are vivid whether its conception succeeds.' If Wu Guanzhong's work
and lifelike, and small touches of abstract beauty can be is understood on this basis, then figuration and abstraction
found within larger areas of figurative depiction. But these are simply two sides of the same coin, and the key lies in
smaller sections carry traces that suggest the whole, while whether the artist's forms and ideas are capable of expressing
the whole exists in an overall unity within each of its parts. a conception that will touch the viewer. Put another way, what
Wu Guanzhong thus reaches the highest summit of this matters is whether technique and materials, through the
kind of freestyle aesthetic, echoing the English poet William shaping and structuring of the artist, can communicate the
Blake's famous line about imagination: 'to see the world in a experience of the spirit. The poet Su Shi once wrote about
grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower.' The Lu Mountains the Lu Mountains that 'viewed from a distance, they seem a
reflects Wu Guanzhong's marvellous ability to find an mountain range; from the side, a single peak,' reflecting the
image encompassing all of nature within some corner of way in which the same mountain presents vastly different
its scenery, unrestricted by the size of his canvas. The Lu aspects from different viewpoints. This metaphorically
Mountains further reveals both his deep insights, and his describes the challenge faced by modern Chinese artists
ability to realize those insights in exciting ways, in terms of as they brought their Eastern aesthetic viewpoint into their
the mutual relationships between freestyle aesthetics and work in a new medium. Wu Guanzhong's The Lu Mountains
the shaping of forms, or in other terms, between abstraction shows just how capable he was at solving this problem.
and figuration in nature. The Lu Mountains displays all
the elements that made Wu Guanzhong's art great. The Lu Mountains makes absolutely clear that in the history of
Chinese art, Wu Guanzhong enjoyed magnificent success in
Wu Guanzhong's pursuit of 'beauty of form' clearly differs two important areas: creating works that reflected a national
from the modern formalism of the West; it is part of a spirit, and developing innovative new approaches to painting.
more Eastern cultural vocabulary, closely tied to national
Wu Guanzhong, Warm Spring in a Little Yard, 1976, Wu Guanzhong, A Mountain Village of Guilin, 1973,
Collection of Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China Collection of National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
吳冠中《小院春暖》1976年作 中國 上海 上海美術館 吳冠中《桂林山村》1973年作 中國 北京 中國美術館
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