💰 趙雷 - Chinese Rock Database

the social milieu the painters have to live up to and deal with is of a strange and random collage combination of agricultural, industrial and postindustrial one which is like a broken mirror caught in a whirling vortex of kaleidoscopic changes accelerated by the prevailing internet technology. the paralleled imageries either in antithesis or in symmetry always acquire internal complexities in proportion to their external opacity or lucidity.{/INSERTKEYS}{/PARAGRAPH} {PARAGRAPH}{INSERTKEYS}between the fall of the five dynasties and the rise of the northern sung dynasty, during the 10th century, the fully fledged chinese ink-color painting has undergone the first phase of the aesthetic evolution and the explosion of style that witnessed the flourishing of monochrome ink landscapes by the eminent masters whose monumental works marked the most significant milestones not only in the art history of china but of the world. the chinese contemporary postmodern condition faced by the postwar painters is unique and complicated without precedent. against the background of the downfall of an age-old imperialistic dynasty, the nationalist revolution, the civil wars among warlords and resistant campaign against foreign invasions, the war generation lunched their artistic projects, under the name of traditionalism, reformism, modernization, industrialization or westernization, to offer their own interpretations, often of a structuralist one, of their version of modernity. between the late ming dynasty and the founding of the qing dynasty, the second phase of the aesthetics transition and the burst of stylistic variation emerged along with the rise and popularization of the neo-confucian school of mind initiated by wang yang-ming from the 16th to the 17th centuries. the painters of the postwar generation, especially the landscape painters, are bound to tackle these head-on colliding contemporary issues with new aesthetic strategy and new mode of creative thought, since landscape painting has been always the dominant artistic vehicle to convey the spirit and essence of the oncoming new epoch. some vigorously utilized the best of past to probe into the core of the modern sensibility without recording superficially the concrete external reality, while some explored their childhood experiences with romantic orientations echoing the widespread and influential movements of new literature. linguists have distinguished chinese, a non-inflective language, as a topic-comment language from the topic-prominent languages, like japanese , as well as from the subject-prominent languages, like english. the emergence of a society of affluence with the vogue of national tourism witnessed the discovering, visiting, portraying and publishing famous landscapes or spectacular sceneries in and around china proper that have become fashionable endeavors for artists, publishers as well as intellectuals. there were also drastic ones who almost gave up chinese art tradition thoroughly by adopting western oil painting tradition or following modernist trends of all kinds with chinese or japanese touches to achieve market success in the west as well as in the east. painting like this shares all the traits demonstrated by the recent internet technology, especially the internationally well received microsoft windows programs. within a span of year, wading through frustrated struggle and acute transformation, the world of ink-color landscape painting evolved from an agrarian idyllic world into a harsh industrial one, and the two world wars burst in the 20th century marked a watershed. it has reached the third phase of its aesthetics adjustment and the eruption of style after the first opium war to the present day. based on the traditional chinese painting language codified, expanded and enriched after the first appearance of the mustard seed painting manual of the late 17th century, new graphic lexical patterns of the 20th century are created to join the old in order to facilitate grammatical contrasts and dramatic ambiguities through the calligraphic brush works thickening up and thinning out to form successive rhythmic tension. some of them ventured to unite artistically chinese tradition and that of the west with a japanese touch. the others tried to rediscover the remote, peripheral and oblivious past for the sake of reinventing an indigenous present that was confused and imbued with endless social and political turmoil. the one in mainland china is of a continental tyrannical communism orientation, while the other is of freedom and democratic orientation taking place outside of the china proper, chiefly in taiwan, hong kong, singapore and some major cosmopolitan cities around the world. in the first place, chinese cultural-political situation has been divided into two laboratories after world war ii. personally, i inclined to adopt the age-old aesthetic of xing 興 , or juxtaposed contingent improvisations, reinvented with new interpretations as my artistic standpoint in the creative process of my painting. born after world war ii, the artists of the postwar generation nurtured their arts during the cold war , the cultural revolution and culminated their artistic projects in the ensuing social-political milieus of postmodern pluralism. in the same time, a cultural semiotics of chinese graphic linguistic approach serves as a major guide line for me to explore the new possibilities and novel frontiers of our time. in the same time, they also have to face the international problems like ecological restoration, global warming and even the impending problem of population aging.