Creating Images for Industrial Civilization -- On Zhang Xinquan’s Works

【Abstract】Zhang Xinquan uses his unique artistic language and challenging visual images to present industrial civilization. The article is going to elaborate and analyze the establishment and development of his individual combination of representationalism, expressionism and abstraction art.

 【Keywords】industrial civilization, oil paintings of Zhang Xinquan

My eyes brightened up when I first came across Zhang Xinquan’s oil paintings of modern cityscape. In contemporary Chinese oil painting, it is rare, if not never ever, to find paintings representing modern industrial civilization with unique artistic language and challenging visual images. In addition to the new aesthetic experience it brought me, the schematism of vessels, ports, automobiles, and airplanes made me ponder over the civilization changes, the development tendency of art, the aesthetic formulary of the nation and the time spirit of art after China stepped into the modern world. It is known to all that the contemporary Chinese history is a period of humiliation when the Chinese were ravaged by western powers, and also a period for the agricultural civilization, after being shocked by the western industrial civilization, to unconsciously adapt to the change. In the conflict between modern and ancient, new and old, weak and strong, Chinese people trudged towards modern society. Significant changes took place both in the political system, ideology and culture. But it’s impossible to change the long-lasting tradition overnight, whose inertia would never stop working. Therefore, facing the tremendous social change, Chinese people instinctively resisted the foreign and idiosyncratic industrial civilization, the result of which turned to be: on the one hand, Chinese people enjoyed the convenience brought by the industrial civilization and the pleasure of better life quality; on the other hand, intentionally or unconsciously, they couldn’t ignore the side effects of industrial civilization. Moreover, Chinese people couldn’t have a free rein on industrial civilization, or even magnified its side effects, for their congenital lack of scientific rational spirit and postnatal superficial understanding of things. The historical reality definitely had an influence on contemporary Chinese art. Although contemporary art and western industrial civilization are reciprocal causation and supplementary to each other, in China, we once furiously excluded and resisted western contemporary art, the roots of which might be in the problems left by the crossover of Chinese society, apart from the diversity and estrangement in aesthetics between civilizations and nations. Therefore, it’s understandable that although most Chinese artists live in the cities, many of them still show a great attachment to Xanadu and tranquil bridges and streams. In their eyes, the built-up city is nothing but a place to live in, rather than an eternal home to rest their souls. As a result, the cityscape is no longer their main subject. Not only traditional Chinese painters, who forget about the reality that they are living in the jungle of armored concrete in modern cities, project their fallacious reclusive ideal in enjoying depicting landscapes and cottages and huts for anchorites to stay in, oil painters also prefer to collect materials with hills, rivers and trees in rural area. Few artists choose to paint high rising skyscrapers and crisscross overpasses. Although many artists also claim that “paintings should reflect the change of the times”, their concerns are still confined to sociology and they simply ignore the fast changing cityscape. From the works of Zhang Xinquan in the recent ten years, we can obviously see his evolving process of spiritual sublimation and practice from tradition to modern, from accumulation to release, from a gradual change to saltation. This process is upheld by various factors such as his profound understanding of formal language and structural schema, his extreme acuity of the concerned information and the ability to balance the complicated conflicts between the perceptual and the rational. It reflects the wisdom and talent of the artist, as well as his unique perception of the artistic language and his unruly courage.

As a landscape painter, Zhang used to be infatuated with natural sceneries and rural subjects, but in his sketches of rural life, his acuity and concern of industrialization has already been revealed. Motorbikes, oxygen cylinders and jerricans constantly appeared in his paintings, and later he definitely painted the scenes with fishing wharves, the gate of a factory, and agricultural machines like tractors. This period could be considered the natural and indispensable original trace of his investigation on oil painting subjects and artistic language. However, his true saltation in painting started since 2002, with a painting named “The Metropolis Old Shanghai”, which depicted the building complex in the Bund of Shanghai. It seemed to be a haphazard chance, but actually it was an inevitable choice for him. His pen sketches about the building complex in Shanghai in the early 80s last century have already revealed his unique acuity and inebriation of the cityscapes. Therefore, his desire and complex to portray industrial subjects is long standing, rather than being prompted by a sudden impulse. In October, 2003, the concern and evaluation he received from the exhibition of the second version of “The Metropolis Old Shanghai” in the 3rd Selected Oil Paintings Exhibition held in National Art Museum of China was much out of his expectation, which spurred him rapidly settled on the artistic language to depict cityscapes and brought him spontaneous delight to paint with great facility. At that time, however, he was just inebriated by a new producing experience, without noticing the true significance of the work in his art course. In 2004, another painting of him about Shanghai cityscape named “The Signal Tower” was awarded the Bronze Prize in the 10th National Exhibition of Artworks and then collected by National Art Museum of China. His personal discovery received social recognition and a haphazard subject corresponded to time spirit. Zhang suddenly realized that he had already opened a new world of art until then. Therefore, we could just say, starting from “The Metropolis Old Shanghai”, Zhang has turned to an explicit new way, instead of the previous ambiguous one, to think and create. He turned to create cityscape and humane landscape, and intentionally chose to “create images for industrial civilization”. As he himself once stated, “The Metropolis Old Shanghai might be a milestone in my art course, which divided my past and future, to revise my exploration course and pattern. I’m more appealed to cityscape, especially the changes brought to people’s life and emotions by industrialization.” In the following years of 2005 and 2006, he continuously produced works about the cityscape of Shanghai, including “The Watercourse”, “The Beach”, “The Shiliupu Wharf”, “The Wharf”, “The Tram”, “The Crossroad” and “Beside the Huangpu River”, to place himself in a mature and steady situation. Shanghai we picked up through his works is an old one with trams in the streets, steamships anchoring at the port, and the mysterious and coquettish sound of gramophones pervading in the air. The images with the specific historical background in the industrial period embodied his wisdom to maintain the order, form schematism with shuttling lines and create the collision between reason and passion. Seen from another angle, his schemas, preference of colors, understanding and expression of cityscape correspond to the much experienced people, as well as people’s delving into and exclaiming over the city history and the origin of industrial civilization. “To strive without conflict, and to work with inaction”, it’s the basis to maintain one’s subjectivity and independence when it is applied to the art course. For current people, Shanghai in the embryonic stage of industrialization in early last century seems to be a fantasy, one in another time and space. But in Zhang’s mind, such Shanghai brought him romantic imagination, apart from the historical memories as cement jungles and a seaport. Consequently, instead of his previous style with close shots, careful depiction, rigorous composition and bright color, he used an overlook angle, a panoramic composition, and darks colors as black, gray and white, to build the epically overwhelming atmosphere. The extraordinary and precise use of strokes, together with the thorough expression, agrees with the demand of dark tableau and experienced sense of modernists, and brings them pathos pleasure similar to the “scar” art. The landscapes of Zhang belong to academic representationalism, but are also interwoven with expressionist feelings and never confined to academic value. After he finished a series of works about cityscapes, he didn’t stop with the formed artistic language. In 2007 and 2008, Zhang successively produced “The Patrol Vessel”, “Vessel” series, “Hermes” series, and “Sea Soul” series. In those works, the previous style of complete composition and dark images no longer stayed, but the pure and bold use of primitive colors like blue, green and crimson and large parts of blankness appeared, where the constitutive form and language characteristics become more vivid. This is best verified in the change of colors and schemas in “The Patrol Vessel” produced in 2008. Here, Zhang abandoned the mode of black, gray, and white, but adopted blue, white and black. He divided white and blue into regular golden section, and balanced the painting with the irregular black smoke. Richness comes together with concision, and the contrast between leisure and intensity is expanded, which manifests visual strikes effectively. “The Patrol Vessel” was hanged in the middle of the exhibition hall of the National Art Museum of China, in “Expansion and Fusion – Contemporary Chinese Oil Paintings Exhibition” held in 2008. That was the affirmation given to his exploration by the domestic academic circles. We could quote from Goethe, “The content is seen by everyone, but the connotation is merely observed by the concerned, and the form is a secret to most.” As an artist with a broadened horizon and accomplishments, he is surveying his soul and thought in the process of producing works. What is more valuable is that, besides his knowledge of the changes in Chinese civilization, he has an acute perception of the international contemporary art. His paintings are both contemporary and international. His style is closely linked to the neo-expressionism in international contemporary art. The magic code of his success lies in his right perception of aesthetic tropism on easel painting, and his personality of silent observation, survey and careful inspection. It’s all right to say that the landscapes and industrial civilization related themes of Zhang Xinquan are the visual art outcomes of Chinese industrialization, urbanization and globalization.

Wang Daunting (1961- ), male, was born in Jichun of Hubei province. He is director, professor and an advisor of master of the Foreign Art Research Center in China Arts Research Academy. His research area is western art history.

By Wang Duanting