When I am painting, I devote myself totally, until I have my feelings well expressed. Meanwhile, I like to put myself in a large historical perspective, so sometimes I reflect on the history of fine art. Rather than imitating, I differentiate, create, and speak in my own language. This book includes selected works of mine since my last album a few years ago. You can see these paintings are rather different. My ideas about fine art have changed; therefore my work changes consequently. But, of course, I didn’t make these changes on purpose, and didn’t strain to fabricate dazzling forms, but kept trying to explore myself and then tell the story from my heart, unconsciously and frankly.
I manage to compress three-dimensional space, yet I keep
away from the style of plane structure; besides innovation, I refer as well
to traditions; and mix oil painting with oriental art culture through freehand
brushwork and intensely felt colors. I participated in an extensive discussion
on the “sinification” of oil painting when I was still a student
at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. People were doing diverse
experiments with great enthusiasm, while considering it very important and
difficult. Though none of us came to a final conclusion then, we all, somehow,
started to evolve the notion of Chinese oil painting.
Social development has broken the trammels on fine art in China. Since the
1980s, a great number of Chinese artists have visited Europe, America, and
other places all around the world. Fortunately, I was one of them. We made
further observations, investigations, and studies of the foreign traditions
and of modern, as well as contemporary, fine art issues. When we came back
home, we tended to look
anew at our own profound oriental culture.
The burgeoning of contemporary Chinese oil painting in the
last two decades results mainly from these factors.
Western masters such as Matisse, Picasso, and Rouault gained their fame after
their discovery, studies, and inspiration of the art of the East and Africa.
Even Monet is no exception: I visited his former residence in France and saw
a large number of Japanese Ukiyo-e hanging on the wall in his bedroom. We
Chinese artists have better conditions for achieving synthesis or combination
of the cultures of the East and the West, beyond merely making use of or borrowing
the foreign culture. A new form of art based on Chinese circumstances has
thus, through experimented, been created.
The origins of the fine art of the East and West have much in common, and,
when talking about Chinese oil painting, we should not just focus on the contrast
between the opposite extremes of the two, but should consider and
apply their common essence.
Since the 1990s, I have put many new elements and original languages into
my art works, and made the color expressivity of oil painting complement the
smoothness and abstractness of traditional Chinese painting. When people see
my current works, they encourage me and tell me that I have “reached
a higher level after all these years,” that my works are “shockingly
impressive.” This book, a collection of my works from 1995 to 2004,
is one result of such encouragement from people around me. Here, I’d
like to present my new paintings to my friends in return for their help and
support, and to the cultural career of my society as well.
Tian Kesheng
August 2004
