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During his trips to Northwest China in the 1990s, the imposing,
raw beauty of the region's mountains and rivers took Cheng Dali's
breath away.
The innovative landscape painter chose to express those
inspiring moments in a different way.
"I found it impossible to express my feelings and reawakened
perceptions of human-nature relations through my works of figure
paintings and birds-and-flowers paintings," he said. "So, I decided
to fully engage myself in exploring my own way of creating Chinese
landscape paintings."
Cheng's soul-stirring paintings are now being exhibited in a
one-man show at the National Art Museum of China.
"At 60, I feel that my career as a Chinese mountains-and-waters
painter has just begun," said the president and editor-in-chief of
the prestigious China Fine Arts Publishing Group.
Running until this Friday morning, the exhibition features 52
selected mountains-and-waters (landscape) paintings by Cheng, who
has created these works during his spare time since 1999.
"Although he has not received systematic training in any fine
arts academy, Cheng is nontheless one of the most influential
artists of traditional Chinese mountains-and-waters (landscape)
painting today," said veteran art critic Shao Dazhen, at a seminar
after the opening ceremony of Cheng's solo show.
"His decades-long devotion to fine arts and his ceaseless
attempts to improve his artistic skills have set him apart from
many of his contemporaries."
Thanks to his role as an editor and publisher and his voracious
appetite for books over the past decades, Cheng has gained a
systematic and in-depth understanding of Chinese literature and art
and Western art from a historical perspective, commented art critic
Xu Peijun.
Intellectual inspiration
The Beijing native spent his early years in Xuzhou of East
China's Jiangsu Province. He went to a small village in Peixian
County of the province during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76)
and spent seven years there as a laborer as tens of millions of
Chinese youths did. But in his spare time, he began to read
whatever he could get his hands on, plowing through tons of books
about both Chinese culture and philosophies, and Western art and
philosophies. He often hid himself in a local library that was
closed down during those chaotic years.
"I read almost all the books there and that laid a solid
foundation for my future career as an editor and artist," Cheng,
who never went to university.
In 1971, he began working as a middle school art teacher, and
very soon, he became a resident artist at a local culture centre.
In the following years, he learned to paint a lot of posters and
New Year's paintings for local people. During that time, he found
Chinese ink painting to be his favourite art genre.
In 1980, because of his impressive works shown during a local
exhibition, he got a job as an art editor for Nanjing-based Jiangsu
People's Publishing House. In the following years, Cheng has
churned out several award-winning art books and art book
series.
In the meantime, he kept his habit of reading extensively and
managed to closely watch the latest development of art inside and
outside of China in the early 1980s.
He also tried his hands on paintings and writing essays on art
and aesthetics. In the mid-1980s, he became the editor-in-chief of
Jiangsu Prictorial, a pioneering magazine which helped promote a
large number of artists who are well-known today for their
innovative approaches, including Zhou Sicong, Xu Bing, Gu Wenda,
Liu Xiaodong and Fang Lijun.
In the late 1980s, he got a second role as editor-in-chief of
Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House where he compiled and published
a series of books about traditional Chinese painting, Chinese folk
art, and books about contemporary art in China and Western
countries.
Since 1998, he has been working for Peoples' Fine Arts
Publishing House, now the China Fine Arts Publishing Group, in
different posts before he became the editor-in-chief in 2000.
As an art editor, Cheng's best-known works include a 10-volume
album "Complete Collections of Chinese Folk and Ethnic Art" and a
22-volume album entitled "Art of the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes," both
of which won him a string of awards including the National Book
Award.
To compile "Art of the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes," he frequented
the grottoes in the 1990s.
Dunhuang as inspiration
"For me, painting is not a painstaking task but a way of
self-cultivation," he said. "I paint and continue to do so despite
all kinds of setbacks in my life simply because I love to paint and
enjoy the creative process."
Cheng's unremitting pursuit of art eventually paid off.
Over the past few years, he has garnered a dozen top awards and
prizes in art exhibitions. In 1989, Cheng won the first prize at
the Joint Art Exhibition of Chinese and Japanese Ink Paintings. In
1994, 1996 and 1998, he scooped up top awards for ink landscape
paintings at the sixth, seventh and eighth China National Fine Arts
Exhibition and Competition.
In 2004, he won the first Huang Binhong Award for Distinguished
Artist, a fine arts award named after the late Chinese master
painter Huang Binhong (1865-1955). Early this year, he won the
first prize at the Second Nationwide Exhibition of Chinese
Mountains-and-waters Paintings.
Since the late 1980s, Cheng has held many exhibitions at home
and abroad and has won over many fans with his unique styles.
Cheng's works are not simple imitations of nature. Rather, they
are refined expressions of his inner world and philosophical ideas,
critics said.
"Looking at his works, one may find them imposing as a whole
with bold use of brushworks and compositions, and at the same time,
they are impressive for the minutely done details," said artist and
critic Zhou Shaohua. "More importantly, his works often leave one
with a lasting impression."
Cheng himself once explained: "Many artists today pay too much
attention to the technical aspect of artistic creation. As a
result, their 'delicate' and 'attractive' works are full of visual
impact and heart-stopping power but lack a soul-stirring inner
strength and lingering aftertaste for viewers."
It is necessary for artists to make innovations and experiments,
but these efforts may not always yield good results in new art
genres or art works of higher quality, Cheng said.
In veteran art critic Zhai Mo's view, "Cheng is both an ardent
admirer of traditional Chinese aesthetics and values and a shrewd
observer of current trends in the art scene at home and
abroad."
However, Cheng is neither copying older styles nor following his
contemporaries, many of whom are drawing from Western art instead
of classic Chinese art and culture.
"Rather, the innovative landscape painter has always been trying
to forge his own style and his own painting language," Zhai
commented.
(China Daily December 13, 2005)
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