Statement——Classicality Is Also Modernity

Zhang Xiaoling (hereinafter as Zhang): ?As before as in 1987, when you studied in Oil Painting Department of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, I think you are a painter who pays much attention on techniques. The atmosphere of that time is to stress social utility of art. At any exhibition or seminar, people kept on debating for humanism. With you, Meng Luding and Gu Liming, we often disputed on existentialism, phenomenology, super-realism, Pop art and other issues. On Xiao Gu’s desk, there always were masterpieces of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Sartre. When we were debating, you were almost silent, because you engrossed in the study of techniques and skills for classical painting. We mocked you many times.Guo Runwen (hereinafter as Guo): ?Yes. I focus more on techniques, because art won’t be art without techniques, especially for realistic painting. Lack of techniques, its thickness and depth will disappear. Contrastively, concept can’t be obtained with efforts while techniques can be. However, concept can be led out by oneself.Zhang: Do you think techniques are summarized from personal experiences, or imported from foreign classicalism, or from both of them?Guo: Techniques have sources and need process of learning. After all, we are very far from the West, so we have to rely on experiences.Zhang: Chinese classical oil paintings deviated from Western ones for hundreds of years. It’s very interesting that the great deviation didn’t prevent Chinese people from accepting them. As scope of acceptance as concerned, classical style may be the largest in all painting styles. From the cultural point of view, it exists logically because of this reason and should exist. What’s more important is that the so-called classicality successfully converted to modernity with visual eagerness and cultural desire from public. Through formation, tone, subject, it successfully infiltrated into society and all levels of public life, from spirit to memory and from aesthetic judgment to cultural concept. Therefore, why can’t it be said as a kind of cultural exchange? Of course, the bottom line of classicality is techniques and language skills, otherwise please keep silent. Judging by language skills, few of domestic painters could be defined as artists of classical style.Guo: For traditional classical painting, China hasn’t such history. To master this Western painting style, Chinese must study and research on ancient European painting methods, its mystery and other aspects. It can’t be solved in short time and need long accumulation. We learn in the place far away from masters. Now it is a society full of image and information, but there is no original work for us, so we have to explore subtly by ourselves from all angles, maybe a lifetime to explore. Traditional European paintings have developed at least 400 years. During accumulation of 400 years, even slight technical change was a painting revolution at that time. Now there is almost no space for original creation in foreign countries, but in China, there is still vast space for learning and inheriting. At present, it may be a lifelong thing for learning and need many persons to do. Instead of a job for a few of people to do, atmosphere need to be formed for it. No matter what genre, or tradition, or modernity, or performance, or abstractness, techniques have little room for original painting creation. More or less, there's imitation inside. In such imitative state, everyone is imitating, after which the best imitators would be found. For many people, they will express views to the era just after mastering skills. Thus, in my opinion, we can’t judge a work as avant-garde or rear-garde, modern or conservative from its form. Forms and techniques are not the most important. Classical techniques can also embody modernity and form a collective, a genre and a phenomenon. As long as a person mastered the skill, he will always be looking for an entrance and exciting point, so that he can continuously go on.Zhang: How do you think about Western classical painting?Guo: One is humanism and the other is religion. I think it includes these two points. At that time, people were in a large religious environment. They need to express religious things, so other forms were unacceptable and you could only use prescribed patterns for expression. This is one of important factors. By the 17th century, high degree of humanism developed in the West. From the political and cultural point of view, artists developed along a sequence from the Renaissance to the 19th century. Crazy state of art in the whole world didn’t exist before the 19th century. After the 19th century, traditional classical painting was thoroughly subverted on political and humanism, and modern painting came into being.Zhang: As you said, the traditional paintings that have religious or political features and reflect lives of lower class. How they influenced contemporary Chinese classical paintings?Guo: Political features and idea to express lives of lower class were well inherited. Meanwhile, for Chinese, the main point is to understand what oil painting is. At present, we should not say oil painting, but painting. Oil painting is a part of paintings. In the 19th century, the concept of painting was very clear, oil painting was oil painting. No matter corresponding materials, tools, techniques or skills, they were all prepared for oil painting.Zhang: On techniques, what are influences from Western classical paintings for you?Guo: The impact is huge. Although I summed up techniques from my personal experiences, I still researched and explored on traditional trunk and I did not deviate from this path.Zhang: Western classical paintings attached more importance on loftiness and there was sorrow inside. Later, they were changed to focus on lives of common people and emphasize expression for elegancy. However, generally speaking, the main theme was still loftiness with elegancy. A strange phenomenon for Chinese classical painting is that oil painters lay particular stress on elegancy and seem to somehow ignore expression for loftiness.Guo: It related to means and state of existence for contemporary oil paintings. As I just said, what moderns mastered is means including traditional realistic painting. They will never express religion.Zhang: What I said was not religion but loftiness. For example, paintings of Yang Feiyun and Wang Yidong are beautiful and focus on expressing human common characters, but contrasted with tradition, the lofty things had faded or even disappeared.Guo: Summarizing the case, Yang Feiyun was partial to the 19th century academic painting. With paintings from nature as center, he combined real life and subjective ideal; while Wang Yidong emphasized on expression for folk-custom. Their paintings contained personal aestheticism, accumulation of culture and attitude to life ideal, which closely related to personal cultivation and life. Moreover, it is naturally revealed. If you are in realm for common people, you may not be very concerned about idealized things, so what you painted will incline to life of common people. If your state is very idealistic and poetical, it will show feeling of loftiness. My attitude to paintings is to draw what I see and like. I will never paint with what I imagine. Sometimes, I paint when I see beautiful things, which is not same as prettiness that normal people talk about, but prettiness restricted by my aesthetic concept. Perhaps what I painted was ragged, but it must be consistent with my aesthetic concept. If I am lofty, my paintings will be lofty; If not, I can’t fabricate. Constraints for people in modern times and past are different. In the past, constraints were humanistic, political, and religious. In modern times, there is only politics without religious mode. From the Renaissance to the 19th century, painters like Dawit were standardized with religious loftiness. For layout, facial shape, formation, there was always a mode inside, which didn’t exist in contemporary China. If I use this mode too, I will deviate from modern China so far that it’s ridiculous.Zhang: I remember that Mr. Jin said China's oil paintings should be large ones. I didn’t understand at that time. Later, I knew large paintings he mentioned were those representing national, epic, grand and historic things. However, subsequent painters turned to draw day-to-day things. I put forward question: do the painters not interested in these things, or are there any technical obstacles for them?Guo: I am thinking the problem too. In modern Chinese art history, large paintings with historic subjects were classic, for instance, "Destruction of Jiang’s Dynasty" and several large paintings in the Martial Museum. At that time, there was still constraint from government. If you want to draw now, you must have a thorough grasp on the history you paint.