Xu Beihong: pioneer of Chinese Realistic Painting?

Résumé du document

Xu Beihong (1895-1953), the modern Chinese master of fine art, was a native of Yixing in Jiangsu Province. His father, from whom he learned painting in his childhood, was also a painter. At the age of 20, Xu went to Shanghai to sell his paintings. In 1918, at the invitation of Cai Yuanpei, a leading educator of early 20th century China, he went to Peking University to work as an instructor at the Painting Research Society and during his stint, learnt Western artistic skills. The next year, along with many of his counterparts, he went to Europe to study Western art: he arrived in Paris and travelled to Berlin and Belgium. Back in China a decade later, he provided his own synthesis of Eastern and Western arts based on Western classical realist painting in an attempt to regenerate Chinese painting. His paintings won him several laurels and he was lauded as the pioneer of Chinese realist painting. Well, does he really deserve this title or is it rather a simplification? We shall find answers to these questions in this essay.

Extraits

[...] Clarke D Modern Chinese Art. Sullivan M Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China. fig.5 Xu Beihong, Back View of a Female Nude (1924) Executed while he was in Europe this study of nude shows how Xu Beihong mastered the use of shading and the anatomical structure to create a sense of rounded volume. Fig.1 Gao Jianfu Flying in the Rain (1932) A scroll showing a squadron of biplanes flying over a misty ink wash landscape with a pagoda. This is a good example of that artist's efforts to create a modern ink painting idiom thanks to the brush and wash techniques of Chinese earlier painting. [...]

[...] Whether he was really or not the pioneer of Chinese realistic painting is of course questionable. But, what counts is that he was viewed as being so by his counterparts. He therefore was highly respected and, thanks to his diverse positions, very influential in the sphere of Fine Arts and could thus have conveyed his ideas to a whole generation of artists. Illustrations fig.2 (left) Xu Beihong: calligraphy (1943) fig.3 (right) Xu Beihong: calligraphy couplet (1938) fig.6 Xu Beihong Tian Heng and His 500 Retainers (1928-1930) fig.7 Xu Beihong Magpie on Maple branch (1944) fig Xu Beihong Galloping Horse (1944) Bibliography On Chinese Modern Art: Clarke, David (2000), Modern Chinese Art, Hong-Kong: Oxford University Press. [...]

[...] XU BEIHONG: pioneer of Chinese Realistic Painting? Xu Beihong (1895-1953) was a native of Yixing in Jiangsu Province. His father, from whom he learned painting in his childhood, was also a painter. At the age of 20, Xu went to Shanghai to sell his paintings. In 1918, at the invitation of Cai Yuanpei, he went to Peking University to work as an instructor at the Painting Research Society and started to learn Western artistic skills there. The next year, as many of his counterparts, he went to Europe to study Western art: he arrived in Paris then moved to Berlin and Belgium. [...]

[...] He summarized seven painting rules in the foreword of his book The Painting Center. The seven rules are proper composition, accurate proportion, clear distinction of white and black, natural movements and gestures, harmony between bright and light colours, clear characterization and unambiguous expression of emotions. From these rules, we can see Xu's careful research into traditional Chinese and Western paintings and his quest to combine the painting methods of the two. The rules not only provide a good summary of his art practice but also represent a big achievement in modern realist fine arts research. [...]

[...] Among the reformists, one of the most prominent might have been Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and his radical programme of reforms drawing on Western Models. According to him, literati painting theory, by favouring amateur expression of mood over the representational skills of the professional painter, for responsible for the decline of Chinese painting which could be saved by European painting that he felt was based on the same principles as earlier Chinese painting. By that time, Cai Yuanpei was appointed minister of education. [...]