Impression • Freehand Style

Preface to Artist Xinsheng Wang

彭锋

Peng Feng

  将国画写意与印象派油画结合起来，创造一种新的油画语言和意境，这是自从中国画家主动学习油画以来，好几代人努力的方向。在美国从事油画创作和教育的王鑫生先生，也在沿着这条道路探索，并取得了可喜的成就。

  王鑫生早年跟随国画大师陈景堂学习国画，在人物肖像方面显示了很高的悟性，大学改学油画，在素描和色彩方面打下了扎实的功底。九十年代初，王鑫生举家迁居休斯顿。经过短暂的适应之后，他在美术教育和油画创作方面找到了自己的发展方向。十多年来，在王鑫生美术学校学习的学生数以千计，他们几乎包揽了美国重要美术比赛的各种奖项，成为北美地区家喻户晓的美术学校。

  在开班授徒之余，王鑫生从未停止自己的油画探索。在大学期间，王鑫生受到了严格的写实油画训练，尤其喜欢欧洲印象派大师的风景画。到美国之后，受到当代艺术的冲击，在中国尚算新潮的印象派，在美国已成了尘封的历史。但是，王鑫生并没有进入流行的当代艺术领域，他没有做装置、影像和行为，甚至没有走美国尚有余温的波普艺术的路子，而是将中国画的写意与印象派的光影结合起来，形成了自己独特的风格。从美国的角度来看，由于王鑫生的油画成功地融入了外来元素，通过回溯历史而开创新貌，因而在总体上可以归入后现代艺术的阵营。但是，从中国绘画的角度来看，王鑫生的油画与流行的后现代艺术非常不同，因为他不是做题材的拼接而是将两种文化连接起来，不同于通过后现代惯用的挪用方式实现古为今用，而是在绘画语言上做出了积极的探索，因此可以说是在中国油画现代性方面做了重要的推进。

  王鑫生油画吸收了印象派观察自然、研究自然的优点，他画人物、风景与静物，基本上都是现场写生，从而摆脱了中国画因为忽视自然而导致的程式化倾向。但是，王鑫生的写生并不拘泥对象的形似，他更注重气氛的营造和情绪的表达，在印象派中又加入了一些表现主义的成分。为了突出油画的书写性，王鑫生更多地用画刀做画，将绘画痕迹毫无保留地留在画面上，从而能够让情绪直接流露在画面上。书写性的加入，摆脱了印象派对幻觉的执着，让画面多了写意的味道。

  需要强调的是，王鑫生在将印象与写意结合起来的时候，并没有牺牲二者的优点，没有偏废一方，而是让二者相得益彰。这与他在美国的教学实践不无关系。在美国教油画，关键是要教好的油画，而不是教哪国的油画。这一点让王鑫生没有过分放大写意画在油画中的作用，而是将它加以合理地吸收和利用。因此，尽管王鑫生吸收了书写性和意象等元素，但是他的作品仍然具有典型的油画特征。要做到这一点，除了技术上要有新的突破之外，心态上也要有好的平衡，否则就很难做到不偏不倚，很难充分吸收二者的优点。

  王鑫生不仅在油画语言上有自己独到的探索，而且能关注社会问题，表达对人类美好生活的祈求。王鑫生以美国乞丐为题材画过系列油画，这些作品并不是出于揭露美国社会的阴暗面的社会学或者政治学目的，而是出于对身处困境中的人们的本能的同情。这批作品曾经在哈佛大学做过展览，引起了很大的反响。汶川大地震之后，王鑫生夜以继日地完成了《震痛 5.12》和《心愿》，并发动休斯顿各界捐助地震灾区的民众。最近，在纪念辛亥革命一百周年之际，王鑫生画了一系列油画纪念孙中山。这一系列的创作，不仅显示了王鑫生对社会问题的敏感，而且体现了他的油画语言具有很强的适应能力，可以自如地表达当代人的生活和感受。

  尽管王鑫生关注社会问题，但他的绘画并不是单纯靠题材取胜，而是力图将题材与绘画语言探索结合起来，让内容与形式融合无间，相得益彰。在王鑫生以爵士乐为题材的系列作品中，这个特点表现得尤其明显。王鑫生之所以选择爵士乐这个题材，一方面看重的是爵士乐作为美国的一种社会现象所具有的社会学意义，另一方面看重的是爵士乐本身所具有的偶然性、即兴表现性等艺术特征。因为爵士乐的这种特征与王鑫生的绘画美学追求不谋而合。在王鑫生的绘画中，我们可以看到爵士乐中的激情、率真、华丽。王鑫生自己非常喜欢音乐，他的朋友中有许多爵士乐高手，他自己经常在音乐的陪伴下作画。在绘画中追求音乐的节奏和韵律，让王鑫生的绘画具有很强的写意和表现性。

  由于王鑫生的油画很好地融合了印象与写意的优点，并且能够关注美国的现实，他的作品在美国广受欢迎。但是，尽管王鑫生已经移居美国近20年，他的作品的根还在中国，他更多牵挂的还是中国的问题，我相信他的作品也会深受中国观众的喜爱。由于王鑫生肩负繁忙的教学和创作任务，他很少回到国内，作品很少在国内展出。这次在国内的巡回展览，一方面是王鑫生向祖国人民的汇报，另一方面也是国内艺术爱好者观摩王鑫生作品的好机会。我衷心祝愿王鑫生在国内的巡回展览取得圆满成功！

                                          2011年4月18日于北京大学蔚秀园

From the time Chinese painters learned oil painting proactively onwards, several generations of them have been making great effort to combine Chinese freehand style with Impressionist oil painting to create a new language and artistic conception in oil painting. Xinsheng Wang who devotes himself in oil painting creation and education in America also explored on this way and has already get favorable achievement.

Xinsheng Wang showed his great capacity of understanding in human figure portrait when he learned Chinese traditional painting from the Chinese traditional painting master Chen Jingtang in his early years. Then in university, he turned to study oil painting and established good fundamental techniques in sketch and color usage. In early 1990s, Xinsheng Wang migrated to Houston with his whole family. When life was settled down after a short period, he found the right way to go in art education and oil painting creation for his own. During more than seventeen years in America, thousands of students graduated from Xinsheng Wang Art School. Almost all kinds of awards in important art competitions in America have been gained by these students and this school is also one of the most famous art schools known to all in North America.

Actually, Xinsheng Wang never gave up his personal exploration in oil painting in his spare time after class. When Wang was accepting rigorous realistic oil painting training in university, he had particular love for the landscape paintings of those European Impressionist Masters. Yet when he went to America, under the impact of contemporary art, he found that Impressionism which was then still new and fashion in China had already become a history of the past in Western countries. However, Xinsheng Wang didn’t follow the tide to turn to contemporary art, he didn’t make installation, video or performance art, what’s more, he even refused Pop art which was still fashionable in America then. He combined the freehand style in Chinese traditional painting with the light presentation skill of Impressionism and formed up his unique style. From the perspective of America, Xinsheng Wang’s oil painting could generally be classified into post-modernist art on account of its successful adoption of foreign elements and new look based on his tracing back of history. Yet from the perspective of Chinese painting, Xinsheng Wang’s oil painting art is quite different from post-modern arts. Because he is neither connecting two kinds of cultures through integration of subjects nor making the past serve the present through the popular appropriation ways often used in Post-modernism. Mr. Wang made active exploration in painting language and he has made an important advance in the modernity of Chinese oil painting.

Xinsheng Wang absorbed advantages of Impressionist that emphasize observing and researching of nature. He paints from life in most of his figure, landscape and still life paintings, thus he avoided routinization tendency in Chinese traditional painting caused by neglect of nature. However, Mr. Wang does not stop his sketch on the level of resemblance to the object; he paid more attention to the creating of atmosphere and expression of mood, namely on Impressionism, he added something from Expressionism. To highlight the feature of writing in oil painting, Xinsheng Wang prefers painting with palette knife in order to preserve his stroke traces on pictures at full, thus his mood could be easily read from the picture. With writing, Mr. Wang avoided persistent pursuit after illusion featuring Impressionism, but added some relish of freehand painting into his artworks.

What should be emphasized is that when Xinsheng Wang combines Impressionism and Freehand painting, he successfully reserved advantages of both sides and even reached a level to make them complement each other in his art. This benefited from his education practice in America. The key point when teaching oil painting in America is to teach good paintings rather than that of any paticular country. With this point as the principal, Mr. Wang never exaggerates the effect of freehand style in oil painting, but rather, he absorbs and utilizes it reasonably. Therefore although Xinsheng Wang adopted elements like writing feature and imagery, his works are still typical oil paintings. To reach such a realm, except for new breakthrough in technique, balanced attitude is also needed; or it would be fairly difficult to be impartial and absorb advantages of them both adequately.

Xinsheng Wang not only makes unique exploration in oil painting language, moreover, he could pay close attention to social problems and express people’s yearning for beautiful life. The oil painting series of Mr. Wang with the American homeless as subject are not for the sociological or political purpose of revealing the darkness in American society, but for his inherent sympathy for those peoples living in distress. These series works have been exhibited at Harvard University and aroused great response. After Wenchuan Earthquake, Xinsheng Wang worked day and night to finish ‘Pain of Earthquake May 12’ and ‘Wish’; he also mobilized people from all walks of Houston to endow peoples in quake-hit area. Recently, at the 100th anniversary commemorating the Revolution of 1911, Xinsheng Wang painted a series of oil painting to commemorate Sun Yat-sen. All these creations not only reflected Xinsheng Wang’s sensitivity for social problems, but also showed his great adaptability in oil painting language, with which he could represent life and sense of contemporary people freely and skillfully.

Although Xinsheng Wang pays attention to social problems, he does not simply win by selecting the subject in painting. He makes efforts to combine subject with his exploration in painting language, thus content and form could be integrated well and complement each other. Another Wang’s series of works with Jazz as subject especially features this characteristic. To choose Jazz as a subject, Xinsheng Wang is on one side emphasizing the sociological significance of Jazz as a kind of social phenomenon in America; on the other side, he paid attention to the artistic characteristics in jazz such as contingency and improvisation feature, which, actually, is precisely coinciding with Xinsheng Wang’s aesthetic pursuit in painting. In Wang’s painting, we could well see the passion, frankness and luxuriance of jazz. Xinsheng Wang loves music a lot and among his friends, many are skillful jazz players. Mr. Wang often paints with music; pursuing rhythm of music in painting, he has well showed his freehand style and expressiveness in art.

Because of the good combination of Impressionism and freehand style as well as the concern for American reality, Xinsheng Wang’s oil paintings are popular in America. Even although Wang had immigrated to the United States for almost 20 years, the roots of his works are still in China and Mr. Wang still more care about China. I believe, Chinese audiences would also be delighted by his works, too. Busy with teaching and creating, Xinsheng Wang has little time to come back to China and his works have rarely been exhibited domestically. The touring exhibition of him this time in China would be a report of him to his motherland and people, on the other, a good chance for domestic art-lovers to study and appreciate Xinsheng Wang’s artworks. I cordially wish the great success of Xinsheng Wang’s domestic touring exhibition!