Guilin Chinese Painting Academy

There is a wonderful art exhibition at the IU Art Museum from painters from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy.

I especially liked the paintings of Xu Fang. They are quite traditional in style - but there was something that seems modern about them - the colors maybe (the tall painting here - only the colors aren't right). She wrote that she was painting "the subtlety of heaven and earth" and expressing the "vitality of nature". And "I am devoted to to painting wildflowers, plants, birds and insects." I wish there had been translations of the calligraphy on the paintings.

Some of the other painters had more modern aspects incorporated into their style. There was quite a variety. The show is up until December 17, 2006.

A clip from the press release:
Against long odds, Guilin artists seek to find an authentic voice for contemporary China

The artists of the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy, who will stage a historic exhibition at the Indiana University Art Museum later this month, are devoted to carrying on the more than 300-year tradition in China of influential Guilin painting.

They're also seeking to give life to a contemporary school that merges traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western art styles that didn't emerge in China until the country opened its doors to outside influences in the 1980s....

The self-selected artists of the Guilin Academy explore the human condition and a rapidly changing China through a fusion of Chinese painting techniques and ideas of Western self-expression, said Judy Stubbs, the Pamela Buell Curator of Asian Art and the coordinating curator of Conspiring with Tradition. Their work includes silk scroll, traditional ink and calligraphic paintings.

"While many of these paintings are lovely to look at, it is wise to remember that at one time, not so long past, art of this nature would have been seen as subversive and even dangerous," she said.

For about 30 years -- from the founding of Communist China in 1949 to the "opening" of the country in 1979 -- Chinese artists were limited in what art they could view and create. Landscapes, birds, flowers and portraits were viewed with suspicion by the government, and paintings affiliated with the country's imperial past were labeled as corrupt, Stubbs said....


The artist of this piece, Bai Xiaojun, says in his statement, "The spirit of ink and wash painting connects with the universe. The movement of ink and wash on paper best demonstrates the yin/yang and solid/void of the universe ...".
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From the Herald Times (subscription) article about this Brush with tradition: Landscape has been a crucial aspect of Chinese art for generations. The revolution in China interrupted this tradition by favoring social realist painting, depicting scenes of smiling, hardworking peasants and factory workers.

It a heck of a thing when painting wildflowers in considered subversive. Maybe it's that connection to the universe and all.