Southern Bank of Lianjiang River, a mountain-and-water painting by Huang Binhong.(Photo provided to China Daily)
Huang Binhong's work is baffling to many, but the painter continues to inspire generations of artists 60 years after his death.
Huang Binhong's landscape style is affectionately called "a lump of thick, dark ink", but his paintings do feature a variety of colors.
Huang (1865-1955) was part of a generation of artists who modernized traditional brushwork by applying gorgeous colors and choosing uplifting subjects. Huang, however, dedicated himself to perfecting shading. He used layers of ink blocks to present the great beauty of nature.
Huang was not anxious for recognition. He spent decades researching Chinese old masters' works. He achieved artistic maturity in his 80s. He once said: "People will not acknowledge my paintings until 50 years after my death".
The National Art Museum of China is showing its collection of Huang's mountain-and-water (shanshui) paintings. The exhibition commemorates the 150th year of Huang's birth.
The exhibition includes two albums of Huang's drawings on loan from a private collection overseas. It is the first time either album has been on public view. One contains Huang's initial sketches, offering a glimpse of the logic his brushwork follows－from which point he started and how he arranged the lines.
The other depicts Huang's 70 copies of old masters' works, and reveals how he built up his own system of the shanshui genre. A highlight is the juxtaposition of Huang's copy and the original caoshu (cursive script) scroll, Poem on Wangwushan Mountain by Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) calligrapher Wang Duo.
The exhibition shows Huang's impact on the artistic world from the perspectives of his successors. It displays a figurine by Wu Weishan, a sculptor and National Art Museum director, of Huang sketching. A giant installation by Shanghai-based artist Shen Fan uses neon tubes to illustrate the basic composition of Huang's works.
One of the better-known works is the oil painting Huang Binhong in His Late Years by Jin Shangyi, the celebrated oil painter. He created the work in 1996, which depicts Huang relaxing in a chair, against a shanshui painted background. The work is usually kept at the museum of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts.
"I very much like Huang's paintings. He applied thick, rich layers of ink to bring out the vigor and moisture of nature," Jin says. He pays tribute to Huang's innovative spirit in the portrait.
