【Art Brigade Retrospective】

Recently, an exhibition with the theme of Sino-French art exchange was held at the Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. The exhibition not only exhibits the masterpieces of the older generation of artists studying in France, such as Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian, Pang Xunqin, etc., but also includes representative works of Chinese and French artists in different periods. Among them, many works and documents related to Chongqing clearly show the southwest journey of Sino-French modern art exchanges.

Time goes back to 1919 years. Cai Yuanpei, Li Shizeng and others are preparing to establish the Huafa Education Association and the Work-Study Association in Beijing to provide young students with opportunities to study in France. In the past 0 years, Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian have arrived in France and traveled to study abroad, and their cognition, selection and transformation of French art constitute the two basic veins of Chinese modern art creation and modern art education: the improvement and reshaping of Chinese artistic creation and concepts with realism and modernism respectively.

In 1939, Xu Beihong moved west to Chongqing with the National Central University. In 0 years, Lin Fengmian arrived in Chongqing via Kunming and lived in the Big Buddha section of Nan'an District. During his stay in Chongqing, Xu Beihong's works such as "Ba People Drawing Water" and "The Wounded Lion" defended his idea of "improving Chinese painting" by using the linear modeling and white drawing techniques of traditional Chinese painting, combined with the focal perspective and light and dark light and shadow of Western art. The grand narrative of his academic history paintings assumes the social responsibility of "saving the country through art", and those works with the theme of the lives of the people in Sichuan and Chongqing demonstrate the artist's realist feelings. During the same period, Lin Fengmian focused on the themes of the scenery of the Jialing River, Peking Opera characters, ladies, flowers and birds, and deeply cultivated the creation of color and ink painting, striving to integrate the formal concepts of Western modern art with the expression techniques of traditional Chinese art and folk art, and his core idea was to "reconcile China and the West". He explores the modernity of Chinese painting through his study of the lines and colors of traditional ink figures, some of which are influenced by Paul Cézanne and the French Cubist style. Benefiting from the deep understanding of traditional Chinese art and the inspiration of French art, the works of the art pioneers fully combined the characteristics of the times and local characteristics of China at that time, and promoted the modernization and nationalization of Chinese art.

In the early eighties of the twentieth century, Chinese art works were invited to participate in the French Spring Salon Art Exhibition for the first time. Among them, the representative vernacular realist paintings of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, such as Luo Zhongli's "Father" and He Duoling's "Spring Breeze Has Awakened" are all exhibited. The poetic and wild narrative of the southwest in the creation of Chinese modern art appears at the Grand Palais on the banks of the Seine River with a unique artistic outlook. As the first collective appearance of Chinese art works in France after the reform and opening up, the exhibition is also a response to the "French Nineteenth Century Rural Landscape Painting Exhibition" held at the National Art Museum of China in 1978, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent artistic exchanges between China and France. In the mid-to-late eighties, more and more Chinese artists participated in various artistic activities in France. Many of their works have been widely disseminated in France and won wide acclaim, indicating that the art of China and France has entered a stage of benign interaction and dialogue, rather than just a one-way study and reference to Western art as in the past.

Nowadays, in the context of frequent cultural exchanges, art academies and creative institutions in southwest China have become more and more in-depth and wonderful in the art exchanges with France. In this exhibition, we can see that the artists' creative media have expanded from painting and sculpture to various digital art, interactive installations, etc., and while exploring new forms of artistic expression, they emphasize the in-depth excavation and contemporary transformation of local culture. For example, Jiao Xingtao's sculpture "Untitled" is based on the transformation of form and vocabulary of materials such as copper and iron waste that symbolize the industrial age. In terms of content, the sculpture creates an image of a military general with a very traditional charm, and the posture is powerful and full of tension; In terms of expression, the interspersing and superposition of various waste metal materials create a rich layer, which is quite in the style of French deconstructivism. Xu Zhen's series of sculptures seeks to explore the similarities and differences between Eastern and Western cultures and aesthetics through the reorganization of classic Eastern and Western sculpture styles. For example, one of the works in the "Alien Series" combines the Roman columns in European classical architecture with the images of painted pottery figurines in the Western Han Dynasty, and the dancing state presented by the two symbolizes the integration of different cultures. In addition, Zhou Chunya's "Spring Dawn in Yu Garden" depicts a traditional Chinese garden landscape in the form of an acrylic painting. The acrylic paint is rich and heavy, but the work as a whole has a sense of elegance, the artist skillfully uses the traditional brushwork of Chinese painting to shape the scene, and the light and agile brushstrokes outline the grace and elegance of the Jiangnan garden, making the picture not only have the beauty of modern art, but also contain the charm of traditional ink, which is refreshing.

Looking back at the southwest journey of Sino-French modern art exchanges, in the past century, generations of Chinese artists have promoted the development process of Chinese modern art through pioneering and hard work, and the French artists' journey in China, which began with cultural imagination, has gradually contributed to more in-depth cultural exchanges and dialogues between China and France. There is no distance between each other, and thousands of miles are still neighbors. From the Seine River to the Jialing River, a long scroll of art across time and geography is slowly spreading.

  (Author: He Guiyan, Director of the Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute)