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"Spring Festival is coming. When celebrating the Year of the
Dog, I believe that Beijingers need not just banquets, temple
fairs, sightseeing, but also musical concerts, and feasts for their
eyes," chimed Fan Di'an, the newly appointed curator of the
National Art Museum of China.
For last year's Spring Festival season, the museum offered the
viewers a rare chance to sample the flavors of diverse folk art
works and enjoy face-to-face interaction with folk artists from
different parts of the country.
This time, visitors will be served very differently, with three
oil painting shows running until February 12.
The largest one is the first "Endless Rivers and Mountains" oil
painting invitation exhibition.
The art show presents at least 240 selected oil works from 60
veteran painters from across the country, depicting an assortment
of portraits, landscapes, and local/ethnic cultures in contemporary
China.
The participating artists include rising stars such as Pan
Xiaodong, Xu Li, Zhang Dongfeng, and Weng Kaixuan, and such veteran
artists as Su Tianci, Zhan Beixin, and Shang Yang.
In this exhibition, "Chinese artists from different age groups
all explore the new possibilities of fusing Chinese aesthetics with
Western techniques in the genre of oil painting," said Yin
Shuangxi, curator of the exhibition, which is warmly supported by
oil painting societies and art academies from across the
country.
Looking at the history of traditional Chinese ink painting, one
will find there has been a parallel development of painting styles
in northern and southern China, Yin said.
In an era of globalization and information explosion, making use
of one's distinctive local and ethnic cultural resources is
considered a vital strategy for artists worldwide to assure their
own national and cultural identities, Yin said.
Yin hopes that this exhibition may give Chinese artists and
critics the chance to ponder such questions as "Could Chinese
artists today, with the new style of oil painting, successfully
forge their own styles with a strong local flavour? Does there
exist a clear difference between artists from northern and southern
China?"
The second exhibition, "Crossing the Borders of Cultures,"
features signature works and related documents such as sketches,
letters, manuscripts, and diaries, from Gao Xiaohua, Xu Mangyao,
Yang Qian and He Gong.
Currently teaching and living abroad, the four artists are
widely recognized as typical of the more active, pioneering young
artists in the 1980s when China left behind the chaotic and
catastrophic "cultural revolution" (1966-76), and began opening its
doors to the outside world and embarking on a path to a market
economy.
"With their youthful minds and passion for art, these
respectable artists have taken part in writing a shining page of
art history in a renewed era of New China. Their names and their
signature works are eyewitnesses to the evolution of modern Chinese
oil painting," said Fan Di'an.
The third exhibition, entitled "Landscapes of Southern China,"
provides the viewers a glimpse of the thriving and refreshing
sceneries and vivid portrayals of local people and cultures from
South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Twelve artists including Xie Sen, Liu Shaokun, Pang Haiyan, Lei
Bo, and Huang Jing, have brought to Beijing 40 of their latest oil
works.
The exhibition may serve as a response to the questions raised
by Central Academy of Fine Arts professor Yin Shuangxi.
"With their unique style, a new version of Lijiang River
Painting School is taking shape among oil artists in Guangxi," said
Su Lu, an art critic and curator for the exhibition.
"They are focusing on events, people and life on their native
soil. They are trying not to blindly copy artists from other parts
of China or artists from other corners of the world. They are
creating their own artistic 'brands'," Su explained.
Following these three exhibitions, the art museum will provide
the audiences with a rich variety of exhibitions from home and
abroad in the coming months, according to Ma Shulin, a deputy
curator with the museum.
Most eye-catching among them will be the first Nationwide
Pottery and Ceramic Exhibition, Russian Art Exhibition, the
Exhibition of Works by French Realism Master Gustave Courbet,
French Crystal Art Exhibition, Year of Italy in China Exhibition,
Exhibition of Contemporary Mexican Art, Ma said.
(China Daily January 27, 2006)
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