Zhao Zhiping's Artistic Evaluation

Zhi Pingjun and I have been friends for many years. We have never met each other, but we have seen many of his outstanding flower and bird works. To tell the truth, he is the painter I pay most attention to in Jiangsu painting circle. Because, in his works, I saw his pursuit and creation, and saw China's flower-and-bird paintings glow with brand-new charm from tradition to modernity. The traces of bold exploration and deep thinking are all written in his works. He is a person who thinks beyond tradition, creates individuality and leads the times from the perspective of traditional painting and even the whole art field. He put himself in the environmental background of China culture. After learning about his pen and ink skills and China's flower-and-bird painting, what he thinks most about is the future of China's flower-and-bird painting.

Undeniably, excellent tradition provides a model for today's flower-and-bird painting creation, but when tradition becomes a procedure, its stipulation also hinders and limits the possibility of its development and breakthrough. The aesthetic category of flower-and-bird painting still lingers on the edge of classicism, with a tendency of retro and traces of mud antiquity. Quite a few flower and bird painters are immersed in the interest of literati painting, and the so-called ontology language is bound to fall into concept and rigidity because of its high stylization.

In this situation, meticulous flower-and-bird forms are mostly quiet and elegant, graceful and elegant, and most of them show the artistic conception of "Huang Jiafu, Xu Xiye". Zhi Pingjun, like a fine horse that broke into the quiet grassland, broke through the shackles of the theory of "one-pin" and literati painting with the passion of "opening the eternal heart", and developed his pen and ink pictures with great flower and bird consciousness, thus forming his modern aesthetic character of meticulous flower and bird "big, complete, clumsy, thick and masculine". The so-called "big" is a broad vision with big birds as the main scene of the picture. With a very tense visual schema, the small feelings and interests of traditional flowers and birds are turned into a great realm that expresses wild heroism and eulogizes the endless spirit of big flowers and birds. The so-called "fullness" means that it emphasizes the close relationship between flowers and birds and their living space more than the ancients, so that flowers and birds blend in and out in a completely constituted natural environment, showing infinite vitality. The so-called "clumsy" means absorbing the deformation experience of folk art according to the characteristics of simple and clumsy utensils, exaggerating the deformation moderately, showing its natural and primitive wildness and having strong vitality. The so-called "thickness" is to break through the thinning level of traditional flower-and-bird painting and pursue the richness and profundity of the picture with the interweaving of various modern expression techniques. "Xiong" refers to the spiritual direction of the picture, which is not only the beauty of the heroic structure interspersed with objects and images, but also the strong expression of pen and ink, and the passionate expression of the painter's determination to win. Without exception, his works put the strengthening and purification of visual language in the first place, observing nature from a new perspective, setting aesthetic orientation with new ideas, constructing pictures with new forms and expressing his feelings with new languages. Zhi Pingjun's world of flowers and birds brings us vigorous and unrestrained spirit, secluded and colorful environment, vivid and interesting taste, and also praises the vitality of nature and declares the irresistible spirit of life.

From his works, we can see that his method of creating a new language style is to analyze and transform the lyrical factors in the original flower-and-bird painting language, or take one end of it, strengthen it, or recombine it, so that it can be brought to the extreme, surpass its predecessors and give people a refreshing feeling. For example, in terms of composition, the birds in his works, whether they are egrets, cranes, birds, orioles, mandarin ducks or unknown birds, not only have the formal characteristics of close-ups and sub-pictures, but also emphasize vivid expression techniques. He always let the idealized birds with decorative and exaggerated formal beauty walk in pairs, or look forward to love, or whisper to each other, or snuggle up to each other, or fly with me, soaked with the warmth and love of the world. In pen and ink, he inherited the traditional skills of meticulous flower-and-bird painting since the Song and Yuan Dynasties, absorbed the treatment of shape, light and color of western painting on the basis of line modeling, and created a new painting style that is not trivial or sweet. Most of his birds are outlined with powerful strokes, washed neatly, summarized and vivid; He used the role of light and shadow to highlight the luster and realism of feathers, with alternating density and proper details. However, the creation of the environment broke the traditional elegant artistic conception, broke through the abstract language of concrete description, and used a lot of ink, forming a mysterious and profound landscape with its own high-rise space and deep space. Or splash ink painting, supplemented by sketches, surrounded by a large area of Mo Yun, highlighting the brightness and brilliance of the main body, or the texture formed by the disorderly collision of ink and wash, showing the flying in silence and the noise in silence in the grand momentum. In the use of color, he has deviated from the traditional principle of "coloring by class". Instead, it directly applies subjective and pure gorgeous colors to the modeling of birds, emphasizes the effect of colors on the screen, and pursues vividness with pen colors. Therefore, when dyeing, he doesn't want to be too precise, but leaves gradual changes and transitions, so that the line shape can still be integrated into the block with bone effect. Especially in the posture of birds, a large number of white exposures strengthen the light color and three-dimensional sense, and at the same time, in the deep background, there are always colors hidden and visible against the main color, thus forming a bright, strong and simple modern color feeling. Obviously, the painter used western color methods to deal with the relationship between background and subject, such as color contrast, cold and warm contrast, color harmony, etc., thus making the picture rich and unified.

Zhi Pingjun's transformation around birds is new, and he has not completely stopped depicting flowers, but most of them have changed their angles, focusing on the symbolic meaning and ideographic function of birds with the implication of flower sentiment, flower meaning and flower thought, showing respect for animal life and singing harmoniously to natural life. He abandoned the tradition of pulling flowers, birds and branches out of the environment, but reproduced the natural ecological environment from various specific perspectives and endowed traditional painting with modern aesthetic spirit. In his works, it is often the combination of meticulous brushwork and freehand brushwork, the combination of ink painting and color, the marriage of abstraction and concreteness, even the clever use of various techniques such as splashing ink and color, hitting water stains, double hooks without bones, accumulating ink and rendering, and even introducing the mystery of texture and the novelty of modern painting materials, forming a new structure, reorganizing a new order, exploring a variety of picture processing and expression methods, and taking painting as the carrier to perform correctly.

It can be seen that Zhi Pingjun's flower-and-bird paintings abandon the small pattern combination and enter the big pattern because of the composition form, language interpretation, coherent ups and downs of breath, spiritual energy of style and its association and interaction with profound traditions, natural scenery, spirit of the times and foreign cultures, so that the scene presented to us is not a clear picture of a flower and a bird at a glance, but an independent narrative way to grasp the world of flowers and birds as a whole. This is a change of vision, as well as a change of artistic concepts and creative techniques. This is related to his long-term efforts to establish macro and overall thinking and corresponding creative techniques. This change from rigor to freedom, from micro to macro, from verve to shock has achieved the artistic goals expected by artists: to capture a big feeling, express a big impression, grasp a big tone, create a big realm, and achieve ever-changing and ever-changing visual effects.

It is enough to prove that Zhi Pingjun established the overall framework of his own flower and bird world, found this magnificent language expression, and grasped the meeting point between his soul and the world. Obviously, Zhi Pingjun, with his rare clear state of mind and seamless interest, moved China's flower-and-bird painting from plane to three-dimensional, from indifference to passion, from traditional aesthetics to modern aesthetics, fully demonstrating that the time is coming when the shape, line, ink and color of meticulous flower-and-bird painting are their own values and truly recognized.

2065438+ Completed in Beijing on July 5th, 2000 —— The artistic quality of Zhao Zhiping's meticulous flower-and-bird painting/Ma Hongzeng

Contemporary flower-and-bird painting is in the process of changing from classical form to modern form. There are many ways to explore, but the real change should be the blend of modern meaning and traditional charm. Zhao Zhiping undoubtedly belongs to the ranks of successful reformers. As early as 1980s, Zhao Zhiping's works attracted people's attention with his novel ideas of conveying colors, when he was only in his twenties. Over the years, he has never stopped exploring and pursuing, and his works have been selected for many national art exhibitions and won awards, and have been exhibited in many countries. The artistic quality of his meticulous flower-and-bird painting has been formed, which is a new atmosphere interwoven by three elements: spiritual orientation, structural tension and ink language change, thus constructing a personalized artistic style. One is the development of spiritual connotation. Zhao Zhiping loves life and pays attention to it. His creative thinking inherited the traditional concept of "harmony between man and nature" in flower-and-bird painting, but it also injected new spiritual direction. Birds in Zhao Zhiping's works are often in pairs or in groups, attached to each other and soaked with the warmth of the world. They snuggled up to each other, or took a nap in the forest, or foraged in the snow, or whispered, or soared, or filled with high-spirited melody, or exuded suffering and affection. Moreover, they are often placed in the vast nature and integrated into a harmonious whole with the earth, sky, air and sunshine. His works always exude elegant and quiet life interest and quiet and moving colors. Zhao Zhiping devoted all his passion to flowers and birds with vigorous vitality, eulogizing the growing relationship between their vigorous life spirit and harmonious family relations. This change of spiritual connotation is consistent with the ecological consciousness of contemporary people who are eager to get close to nature, protect nature and return to nature. He used painting to call for the family consciousness between man and nature. It is this spiritual orientation that fundamentally determines the modern character of Zhao Zhiping's flower-and-bird paintings. Secondly, the tension of aesthetic structure is enhanced. Flower-and-bird paintings since the Ming and Qing Dynasties are mainly based on folding branches and flowers, with stylized corresponding birds. The structure is mostly introverted, and the artistic treatment is mainly "empty". Zhao Zhiping changed into a full composition, and even a aftertaste overflowed from the painting and extended to infinite space; Flowers, trees and birds are often integrated, which shows the new concept of interdependence of natural life. The new picture structure presents a strong aesthetic tension, which not only impacts the vision of the concept, but also impacts the soul of the concept. Third, the evolution of the color form of pen and ink. Zhao Zhiping also made a breakthrough in painting language. He broke the boundary between meticulous brushwork and freehand brushwork, and saw the charm of both pen and ink and color, and boldly used various texture effects. He even draws nutrition from oil painting, watercolor painting, rock painting, printmaking, craft design and folk decoration patterns, and also draws lessons from western impressionism, separatism and modern art, but on the whole, he still has a style type with China characteristics. For example, traditional meticulous flower-and-bird painting often pays more attention to color than pen and ink. Zhao Zhiping skillfully combined the two, and with calm and dignified pen and ink, quiet colors and rigid and flexible lines, he produced a new vocabulary, which made his works more poetic and tasteful. For another example, traditional meticulous flower-and-bird painting mostly uses flat painting or dyeing, and uses more inherent colors, which is often more decorative than realistic. Zhao Zhiping strengthened the expressive function, artistic function and lyric function of color, or sought the sense of light and reverse light, or sought the harmonious rhythmic beauty of color tones, making his works more vivid and appealing. For another example, Zhao Zhiping is particularly good at using the texture infiltration effect of materials to cooperate with his similar experiences in different natural environments. Sometimes he supplemented the sketch with a brush, and it evolved into a mysterious background or hazy atmosphere, which has a unique meaning. China's flower-and-bird painting is a unique artistic style in the world. Under the background of globalization, it has a broad development space. In a sense, flower-and-bird painting, which is transformed from classical to modern, has more advantages in international dialogue and exchange. Zhao Zhiping is in the golden age of artistic creation and has an international vision. I believe he will have higher ideals and greater achievements. Zhao Zhiping is a painter who is good at expressing colors. His freehand flower-and-bird paintings are full, colorful, high-spirited and have a strong decorative interest. Compared with those graceful and nostalgic flower-and-bird painting styles, Zhao Zhiping's painting language is bold and unrestrained, with a fresh and modern atmosphere. From his paintings, we can clearly see the artistic personality of frankness, enthusiasm and boldness.

—— Zhou Jingxin Ye Pengfei, President of Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Traditional Chinese Painting

Zhao Zhiping is famous for his meticulous flower-and-bird painting and freehand flower-and-bird painting, and he is an influential painter in contemporary China. Reading his works, we can feel that his art is constantly sublimating, and we can also feel the unique cultural taste and unique spiritual taste in his works, reflecting the unique cultural thinking. Deep artistic conception, deep pen and ink feelings. As a flower-and-bird painter who is good at writing and painting, how is Zhao Zhiping different from predecessors and modern people in artistic creation? So he is looking for a breakthrough, pursuing his own unique artistic language and showing a kind of China culture in his works. On the creation of meticulous painting, Zhao Zhiping realized that since the creation of Changzhou Painting School by Yunnan Tian in the early Qing Dynasty, it once flourished in the period of Kang and Gan. Today, this neat and elegant "boneless" flower is declining. As a painter of the times, he must shoulder the responsibility of revitalization and find a breakthrough. After years of thinking and exploration, he used freehand brushwork to express meticulous painting with his solid freehand brushwork and ability to use color. He created a new expression method of meticulous painting in the form of meticulous painting and freehand brushwork, and improved the freehand brushwork function of meticulous painting in technique. In composition, he absorbed the expression techniques in landscape painting and western painting, used bright and dense lines, used the specific combination and overlap of modeling, and used the overall simplicity and local subtle changes of color and perspective to form a melody that gradually approached from far to near, resulting in the effect of being close to reality and far from reality, which made the flower-and-bird painting have the same affectionate and layered feeling as landscape painting, and also made the picture virtual and real, overlapping layers to produce a broad vision and form a big scene. Zhao Zhiping's new creation not only adapts to the development of the times, but also provides new enlightenment for the development of Changzhou painting school. In freehand brushwork, he has always been a supplement to meticulous painting. He expresses the essence of human nature through brush strokes, reflects his inner world and deep feelings for flower-and-bird paintings, making his paintings more pure and thoughtful. Therefore, his freehand brushwork focuses on the expression of subjective consciousness, blurring and reshaping the objective imitation object, expressing his irresistible impulse with the help of the uniqueness of pen and ink lines, and causing the viewer's telepathy. It is his genius to express the deep and quiet artistic conception with the impulse of lines and pen and ink. In Zhao Zhiping's picture, resting birds, lotus leaves, grass ponds and orchids all maintain poetic and illusory natural beauty and the rhythm of life, and all have their own scope and expressive force. Lines have gone beyond the general description and entered a free language state. The motivation of Zhao Zhiping's achievements in Chinese painting creation is the interaction between learning and thinking. He has always taken "learning without thinking is useless, thinking without learning is lazy" as his motto. Therefore, we always seize every bit of time to study, research and create, closely combine artistic life with artistic work, form a calm artistic mentality, gain the strength to breathe and forge ahead, and strive for the cultural spirit of "a gentleman is healthy and self-reliant". It is precisely because of this spirit that his works not only make people feel cordial and calm, but also make people feel slightly melancholy in pleasure. This is the beauty of Zhao Zhiping's flower-and-bird paintings and his unique spiritual taste.