Kou's Personal Honor and the Influence of His Works

The Zen-style clean world and shawl long hair constitute a group of contradictions, revealing Kou's special mental journey and attitude towards life. In the eyes of Buddhists, hair is an annoyance, photography is an insistence, and tonsure itself represents restraint and a desire for purity.

In China in the last 20 years of last century, long hair became a breakthrough of rebellious young artists to the original order, and became a symbol of pioneer and avant-garde. Kou, who has long hair, rushed into the world of mortals so eagerly. After several rapid and blind rollovers, with the whole China in a dilemma, they come from real life, even from the depths of the soul. Kou later understood that the problem was that he lost his faith and aesthetic power. The only way out is to rebuild his faith and aesthetic reconstruction. Anyone who surpasses him must have jumped out of the predicament with extraordinary courage and wisdom. Kou Peng Yue did it. He searched hard, explored silently and went forward bravely. Here, long hair is color, and no phase is empty. There is no difference between them, long hair and no hair, and there is no difference between becoming a monk and being at home. The realm is high!

Red dust

1990, it was a year full of passion, contradiction and tension in China. The art exhibition in' 89 has just ended, and the trend in' 85 is still strong. Kou, a young classmate, walked out of the gate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts humming rock and roll. He graduated. With fiery youth and eagle-like ambition, I hit the future like a fan. In the rapidly changing society, all the patterns have been pushed down, and there is no reliable and stable lifestyle to apply. Everything is chaotic and boiling. Only Sartre's existentialism is the strong voice in the hustle and bustle of the times, encouraging the young people of the times to rebel and deliberately do irreversible life experiments. Kou got into the ground without hesitation. 10 years, he is tireless and fearless. He is a commercial photographer and was once famous in the circle. He made movies for two years and set up an advertising company. In his own words, "Do whatever you want. When you are free, you will make an appointment with three or five friends and go to the bar to drink all night. This happy life lasted for a long time. Looking back now, you can't wait to kick yourself to death, because it is an ignorant and meaningless waste. "

For Kou, who has received years of strict aesthetic training and strong reflective ability, the more lively and noisy the place, the easier it is to have a sense of nothingness, and the short-term happiness and sense of accomplishment will never bring him real long-term peace. He doesn't want to fool around like this. One day in 2000, he suddenly put aside his bohemian self, started his painting brush again with numerous difficult problems and upset feelings in the world of mortals, and began to seek liberation and move towards a pure and higher spiritual life. Since then, the Buddha has entered his sight and gradually penetrated into his soul.

In a blink of an eye, it is another year of 10. He has been in bars for the past ten years. Clubs and studios are full of prosperity, noise and variety; In these ten years, he walked in deserts, plateaus and deep mountains, accompanied by the bells and drums in the morning, depicting his soul in the smoky and elegant Buddhist music, and cultivating his painting and personality. This reminds me of many stories of Buddhist masters, who often not only have to transcend suffering, but also get rid of the shackles of wealth and luxury, which requires great wisdom and courage. Together, it took twenty years to get today's coach and today's clean world. Only by entering the world of mortals can the world of mortals emerge. However, for some people, the world of mortals is prosperous, and for others, it is prosperous.

Simple spirituality

As the name suggests, Clean World doesn't mean to show off skills. Kou simplified the complexity in the minimalist composition and accumulated profound Buddhism. In the center of the picture is a shiny face with no facial features, a crimson freehand monk's robe, and the background is elegant and cold. A looming valley or a lonely and desolate forest. Seemingly simple, but orderly, elegant and vivid, a clean world without noise and only heart sounds suddenly emerges, ethereal, peaceful and simple, standing in front of the painting, surging religious pleasure comes to my face.

Critic Jia Dejiang wrote: "I believe that Kou's' Clean World Series' is not only the creation of an art form, but also the advocacy and pursuit of an aesthetic ideal. When this aesthetic ideal is condensed and embodied in his works, it will form a specific artistic spirit direction in the future, that is, to give aesthetics the quality of faith and open corresponding artistic forms in faith. It should be said that the relationship between art and religion, which has been neglected for nearly a hundred years, has been inspired by the appearance of the aesthetic text of "Clean World Series" by Kou. "

Contemporary art pays too much attention to commercial value, human subjectivity, sense of form and its function as a weapon, while ignoring its origin with religion and its original aesthetic significance. Furthermore, religion itself is always threatened by secularization and vulgarization. Take Buddhism as an example, many pseudo-believers use it to decorate their crocodile tears, cover up their ignorance and greed, and even use Buddhism to offset their sins, hoping to help themselves get promoted and make a fortune by believing in Buddhism. This has obviously gone astray, and aesthetics itself seems to be shelved, which is equivalent to pedantry and unreality. Television, internet and boring tabloids are full of people's spiritual life, and material desires occupy people's hearts. People, like emotional consumer animals, chase after substances and hormones everywhere, and there is an undercurrent of cultural collapse under the appearance of prosperity. Compassion is gone, shame is dormant, and elegance and interest are even afraid to walk around under the ridicule of popular culture. Isn't this a sad, sad and pitiful world?

Kou is deeply worried about this. He said: "The deepest pain of modern people is that while releasing their great energy, they banish the transcendental sacred value, lose their original appearance, become slaves of greed, materials and tools, fall into the alienation trap of man-made material services, and be occupied by what they have, thus causing the distortion and tension between man and nature, man and society, man and things, including man and himself, leading to. A series of social problems, such as social anomie, lack of belief, spiritual emptiness, expansion of selfish desires and moral decay, have made modern people increasingly become fragmented biological beings and homeless spiritual vagrants. "

There is an urgent need to rebuild faith and aesthetics. From the perspective of Xinhua News Agency, the need of spiritual life should be improved by warmth and lust. This great project should be led by real cultural elites, and Kou is undoubtedly one of them. The road he chose met the deepest needs of China society. Almost overnight, Buddhism became a world-famous school. At this time, Kou found a very touching artistic language in line with the contemporary context on the basis of the classic Buddhist art..

"Clean World" shows its special artistic charm with its Buddhist theme of shining Buddha's light and profound fraternity and the expression of "making the West serve China", which has won universal praise. He said: "The Clean World series is actually my understanding of life. If there is any other meaning, it is to educate people to live and work with the ethics of eliminating evil and doing good, which is also based on the theory of mind and nature. "

As a painter, the impulse to express this aesthetic ideal makes him unable to describe the Buddha in his heart with painting language. "Living in the Buddha, the Buddha is in life". All the materials in the painting come from Buddhist life, pursuing a light and empty realm. Traditional pen and ink express the spirit of freehand brushwork, and the expression of images is also romantic; Color is only limited to the changes of black, red and Huang San tones, and the painting elements of western light, shadow and color are appropriately absorbed, so that the rendering of Buddhist temples and the creation of artistic conception reveal a kind of Zen. As Kou said, his "Clean World Series" is to warn people that "people themselves should have spiritual promotion, expansion and transcendence. This kind of expansion and transcendence leads people from the original secular feelings to a higher level of clarity, from which people can be reborn and become extraordinary. " The confused soul has been baptized, the restless heart has been comforted, and the meaning of purity itself can be better reflected.

Returning to harmony, simplicity, simplicity, spirituality, integrity and nature will enable waverers to readjust their direction of self-transcendence, re-establish aesthetic ideals with belief quality and re-establish the spiritual home of modern people, which is the ultimate goal pursued by Kou's series Clean World. Painting a "clean world" is a kind of practice, and appreciating the "clean world" is also a kind of practice. Draw Buddhism with the painter's pure heart, benefit all beings with the virtue of Buddhism, make people let go of themselves and "join the WTO with the spirit of being born" to achieve real inner purification.

It can be said that Kou's "Clean World Series" has both noble simplicity and elegant roughness, and is a style with oriental artistic charm. Although this style was first established in his works, it is a solid beginning of discovery and creation in a new field.

It is a cultivation method advocated by Confucianism, and now it is also a belief of Brahma to tell the truth.

In fact, painting Zen or practicing meditation is a boring and difficult process, and there are always more people who give up than those who persist. Perhaps, only those who are predestined friends with the Buddha, who are sincere and can enjoy it, can achieve positive results. Kou said: "Before painting the Clean World series, I always tidy up my room and take a bath: I incense Manjusri Bodhisattva, and then I listen to Buddhist music, such as the Great Compassion Mantra, Heart Sutra, and Brahma, and then I start painting." This is his piety, and he also said: "I always feel that loneliness is a kind of fun, a kind of fun different from laughing with friends, a kind of fun that I can't tell others." When you feel lonely, you can do whatever you want without worrying about other people's eyes. This freedom is enough to completely relax the body and mind. And feeling this freedom is a great pleasure of loneliness. " It's his pleasure. From this point of view, it seems reasonable for Kou to realize this truth.

The starting point of Kou's research is to spread Buddhism to the north and advocate universal salvation. He doesn't want to be narcissistic or immune. Since March, the "Kou Qingjing World Art Touring Exhibition" sponsored by Taiwan Province Foguangyuan Art Museum and the School of Continuing Education of the Central Academy of Fine Arts has been launched, and the first exhibition, 20 10, was held in Yixing Xueyuan Art Museum from March 9 to May 9. 20 10 will be held in Jiaying Hall, Suzhou from June 16 to August 16, and the tour of Yangzhou Station, Taipei Station, American Station and Australia Station will be held in the second half of 20/kloc-0 to 201. A monk commented: "There is a rich background of pursuing tranquility and fraternity behind the Clean World series. He is not only a simple painting, but also a Buddhist theory, philosophy and truth of life. " I hope that the Buddhism realized by Kou can shine on more people who are sincere and eager to clean the world through exhibitions, and help people walk better on the road of rebuilding their faith. That's many advantages.