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Transcendence of Form and Derivation of Cultural Concepts —— A Brief Analysis of Liu Yonggang's Painting Art

He guiyan

introduce

Judging from Liu Yonggang's long-term creative process, his artistic style shows such a development track: from realism to expressionism, and finally to abstraction. Generally speaking, the early creation was mainly based on the realistic language of the college, and at the same time, it paid attention to absorbing the expressive vocabulary of western modern painting, which initially formed its own style. In the 1990s, Liu Yonggang completely abandoned the academic creative convention and found a new way in the German expressionist tradition, trying to find a new development path between "abstraction and expression". Since 2006, Liu Yonggang's painting has undergone new changes. This sense of distance caused by the change of style benefits from the change of artists' creative ideas. On the one hand, he is determined to stay away from the frame of reference of western modern art, especially trying to go beyond the existing formal expression system in the west and distance himself from it; On the other hand, he emphasized the inner cultural concept and deep-seated cultural appeal of his works, hoping to integrate these works into the development of local art history in China. Throughout the history of Liu Yonggang's painting, his painting art keeps a clear development vein. In order to deeply understand his paintings, we need to briefly review and sort out Liu Yonggang's creative process.

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1964, Liu Yonggang was born in Zuoqigen River, Ergon, Hulunbeier League, Inner Mongolia. Later, Ergon and Genhe developed into two independent cities. Ergon is located at the northern end of Hulunbeier Grassland in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, at the northwest foot of Daxinganling, and belongs to one of the cities with higher latitude. Because the art education in Ergon was relatively backward at that time, there was no corresponding hardware facilities, and the geographical location was remote and the information was blocked, Liu Yonggang's early career of seeking art was extremely difficult. However, the pain and frustration on the way to school did not reduce his enthusiasm for art, but shaped his resolute and brave character. 1982, the long-cherished wish for many years has finally come true, and Liu Yonggang was admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Arts with excellent results. For him, being admitted to the Central Academy of Fine Arts means that his artistic career has a brand-new starting point.

Liu Yonggang studied in the first studio of the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. 1959, the Central Academy of Fine Arts established the studio system. At the beginning, there were three studios. The first studio was presided over by Wu Zuoren and Ai Zhongxin, and the second and third studios were headed by Luo and Dong respectively. 1985 The fourth studio hosted by Ge was established. At that time, Jin Shangyi was in charge of the first studio where Liu Yonggang studied. The teaching goal of the first studio is different from other studios. The first studio emphasizes the study and research of the classical realism tradition since the Renaissance in Europe, pays attention to the modeling foundation and pursues meticulous and in-depth description. At the same time, on the basis of strengthening the tradition of the college, actively explore the development path of nationalization of oil painting. In the first and second years of college, Liu Yonggang received systematic and standardized academic training. At this time, his task is mainly to solve the problems of modeling and color. It was not until the third year of college that Liu Yonggang's creative concept really changed, and he had a sense of urgency to find his own style. At that time, Wei was in charge of the teaching of creative classes in grades three and four, and was deeply inspired. He once talked about the influence of Mr. Wei on him:

I think his things are "sunny", and the key thinking he brings me is that sometimes it is not necessarily the best solution to directly intervene in the problems that occur in the present society. But like teacher Wei, it is expressed in sunny colors and simple shapes, which can touch our hearts more. I think that among the old artists of that generation, Mr. Wei's artistic view is still very distinct and strong, which is quite rare.

For Liu Yonggang, it is extremely important to realize the importance of artistic form and noumenon language in his creation, because it makes a good theoretical preparation for him to consciously integrate the language of western modernism into his paintings. But the real motivation of his thinking about personal style and language conversion comes from his own learning experience. At this time, he was tired of the university teaching model, thinking that this model lacked vitality and too many rules inhibited the free expression of personal feelings. He once talked about:

Sometimes I don't like to go into my own studio, and I feel that everyone is grinding their feet there. This may be related to my personality. I prefer happy and developing things.

Liu Yonggang hopes to incorporate expressive factors into his works, which is not only his inner desire, but also the result driven by the culture of that era. After all, the discussion on "formal beauty" that originated in the late 1970s and the debate on "self-expression" in the art circle from 65438 to 0982 can provide a frame of reference for Liu Yonggang's current creation. On the one hand, the worship of "formal beauty" of art urges art to return to noumenon, thus providing a theoretical basis for art to get rid of the shackles of politics, literature and religion; On the other hand, the admiration for "self-expression" liberates the artist's creativity and makes it possible to establish a personalized style. In fact, the above two artistic trends of thought are amendments to the previous artistic paradigm of the Cultural Revolution, and the essence of artistic liberation is to realize the liberation of people's thoughts and cultural concepts. However, for artists in the mid-1980s, there was no existing artistic style that directly appealed to expression. Therefore, they need to learn from western modern painting and complete the transformation of modern art in China with the help of the transformation of western modern language.

It is against this background that Liu Yonggang made a positive attempt in language and style, and drew a number of works with obvious modern style. As he said:

At that time, there were many other people's shadows. After I discovered the post-impression, a group of painters in Germany moved towards expressionism and began to get rid of the images they saw naturally. Their pictures are from the heart, and they can express their feelings when using colors. A color in their hearts, even green, can turn red, which is very bold.

Although Liu Yonggang devoted himself to the artistic path of "subjectivity-expression", he was still a junior at that time and had to compromise in the face of a strong academic tradition. Liu Yonggang has two graduation creations with different styles, one is Flying, and the other is In Mount Elra in June. "Flying" is the artist's reconstruction of the image of flying in Buddhist murals. But with the help of "flying", artists still want to convey a humanistic feeling, that is, to emphasize the double liberation of body and mind. Different from the combination of realistic language and surrealism in Flying, June in the Age of Mount is a purely expressionist work. In this work, subjective colors, washed modeling and large-scale division of black, white and gray make the picture have strong visual tension. Our question is, why do these two works form such a big contrast in style? Liu Yonggang once explained this:

The idea at that time was very simple, that is, I felt that I was a studio, and my graduation creation should be realistic and classical, which was also the requirement of teachers and schools, so I had Flying. But at the same time, I want to tell you that my real idea is "June in the Mountain Age".