THE IMAGERY COMPOSITIONS IN THE PAINTINGS OF SHANGGUAN CHAOYING
PAINTING WITH A FREE HEART 简体中文
ON ULTRA-DAXIEYI PAINTING

    The ultra-daxieyi painting (Daxieyi means more unrestrained freehand brushwork in traditional Chinese painting) is an art to reveal the spiritual world by disseminating and re-grouping the dots, lines, blocks and images in a sentimental color and applying colors at free will.

    As for an artist, portraying his inner world with heart and applying colors at his free will means to describe the sense of perception with feelings in his heart and give an expression of his psychology in full comprehension's. It is based upon two essential points' on one hand, upon his basic comprehension of the initial state of things, he will go beyond the rules of painting and freely compose and re-group the images based on his psychological requirements and compositions of imagery in order fully reveal the state of his mind; on the other hand, to give a true and full expression of the quintessence and connotations of the Eastern cultures to strengthen the national senses while courageously accepting the influences of the Western cultures and arts and compromising the merits of foreign arts.

    From the age of rock pictographs until now, in my opinion, Chinese painting has gone through and is going through three stages in a panoramic view of her development. The first is her junior stage which is a period of indistinct consciousness without any laws. What faced the people was a completely primitive mistiness.In the middle stage, the middle bourgeoisie has gone through a long process with an accumulation of rich experiences as the art developed from the lawless to the lawful. The art has gone through different forms from the rock pictographs, gongbi (meticulous) paintings and boneless paintings to xiaoxicyi and daxieyi. In their artistic aspirations and perceptions, the artists have also gone through different stages: to paint forms in forms, to describe the spiritual world in forms and to convey the artistic conceptions in a certain image. There fore, while the fully developed system are established and highly stylized, the art itself has imposed restrictions on its development thereby.

    The third is the senior stage which is an advanced stage of indistinct consciousness. The art has gone through and is going through a tough transformation. The artistic objective is neither a reproduction of the nature nor an expression of the nature any more, but with the purpose of extending the human horizons, revealing the psychological activities of the people and enlightening the human thinking. It is absolutely a reflection of the spirit world of the artist himself. Therefore, the primitive consciousness of the first stage is different from the indistinctiveness of the senior stage in nature. (see the following graphics).

    As shown in the graphic, the essence of the ultra-daxieyi painting lies in the extent of deepening artistic conceptions, i.e. the extent of exploring an artist's spiritual world. A thinking process means a process of spiritual purification and distillation. The more profound and thorough the purification is, the more spiritual dynamics the works provide viewers. The artist of the ultra-daxieyi painting does not focus his attentions on the formal and spiritual beauty of the natural objects, or we may say that he has gone beyond the traditional aesthetic requirements of "the likeness and unlikeness" theory of Chinese painting. It is a sort of psychological aesthetics and a display of his spiritual world that artists have understood in their minds and have been seeking in order to re-group and compose the tableau to acquire an ideal image corresponding to his own psychology based on his artistic will and intrinsic demands.

    The media applied in the ultra-daxieyi painting are based upon their comprehension's of the objective reality. The images have been screened and refined, arousing special feelings by means of artistic condensation and deformation and, as a result, such a deformation is infiltrated with the high spirit and profound sentiments of the artist because of the formal beauty and the conscious correspondence with the artist's psychological status. The blocks, dots and lines have constituted a multi-dimensional space in its entirety by means of organic interweaving and composing so as to reveal the ever-changing psychology and transcendental spirit of the artist.

    Being filled with the artist's feelings and treated by ways of specific artistic skills, the ultra-daxieyi painting has created an indescribable psychological shock and penetrativity. He has tried to convey a certain meaning and directly resort to his perceptions through images in order to arouse a specific reflection of sentiments for a responsive chord in the heeds of viewers. It is quite different from the traditional all in the nature of ideology Its development 1ies in a completely free space that has been created for the all, which not only contains the changes in the series of time, psychology and composition, but also fully reveal the psychological distillation in the human sub-consciousness and reflect the spirit of our times. At the same time goes by it definite1y furthers the ever-changing relationship between the experiences of the individua1 aspirations, the sentimental changes and their feelings in life. This is the inexorable trend of traditional Chinese painting and an inevitable outcome of modem Chinese painting.

    Under the sunshine of the Eastern and Western cultures, the art of ultra--daxieyi painting will surely try to pave a way leading to the all paradise in its new experiment as modern Chinese painting are being confronted countless difficulties before reaching the paradise.

ANNOTATIONS:

Gongbi: traditional Chinese realistic painting characterized by fine brushwork and close attention to details.
Boneless: painting without any outlines, especially in colors
Xiaoxieyi: a comparatively fine freehand brushwork painting in an impressionistic manner in traditional Chinese painting
Daxieyi: a more unrestrained freehand brushwork in an impressionistic manner in traditional Chinese painting

Shangguan Chaoying
Wumo Study


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