Multicolored Poetry

Text / Li Chao

The poet Ai Qing once praised Lin Fengmian's art as "multicolored poetry,"a general description of his artistic style and ideals. At the same time, this metaphor lays out for us a path of understanding and appreciation of the art and artistic realm of Lin Fengmian.

Lin Fengmian is generally considered a pioneer of 20th century Chinese fine art as it played a dominant role in the blending of Chinese and Western art. After a tempestuous decades-long personal journey and the gradual development of a unique way of thinking, Lin formed his own individual judgment and ideas regarding Western and traditional culture. In the face of Western culture, Lin leaned toward a style transformed from romanticism to cubism while abandoning the rules of the traditional academic schools of thought. In the face of traditional culture, Lin focused on the early traditional and popular art of the Han and Tang Dynasties. He used these two cultural resources as the basis of his creativity.

Next, he established the ideal of "a blending of Chinese and Western art,"and in the process of artistic realization, there gradually appeared a related stylistic pursuit of the concepts of "strength"and "beauty."In the language of art, this acted as a link to the coming together of modern Western and ancient Eastern art. Thus, the so-called "multicolor"in Lin's works confers a rich and unique inner meaning, i.e., a powerful, stylized use of color. The so-called "poetry"of his works exhibits the artist's noble pursuits in terms of the spirit of his work, i.e., the grandeur and depth of Chinese artistic expression. Lin's color ink work from his later years, "Wild Geese Flying Over the Forest,"is considered one of the best representative works of these principles.

Lin Fengmian's "Wild Geese Flying Over the Forest,"was created in the late 1970's. The work utilizes the traditional flat and distant type of composition in order to create a placid, faraway, and peaceful tone. In depicting the subjects, the artist uses straight, slanted, and curved lines and circles, as well as changes in positions and colors in the expanse of space. The painting shows a mountain forest scene awash in the beautiful color of the sky. Out of the forest slowly fly three wild geese, wings extended. The clear mountain valley and vast expanse of cloudy sky create a placid atmosphere extending into the distance. The forest's swaying and the geese's flying into the wind contribute to the aesthetics and the life of the work, a balanced and stable composition.

In creating the form of this work, the artist's most successful technique was his use of color ink. The thick forest in the foreground and the comfortable mountain images in the background create a contrast between dense and diffuse. The mountain valleys which look like they are floating in the air bring out the wild geese on the right, flying toward the limitless space between earth and sky. It is here that Lin demonstrates his unique technique of mixing color and black ink. For the landscape, he added highlights of burnt ochre, blue, green, and other colored inks according to the needs of the painting, the coolness and warmth of light, and the distance between the subjects. This method originated in Western painting, but the visual effect is in fact very close to that of traditional painting. The changes in the ink application accomplish two things: one, to show the depth between the foreground and the background and two, in the middle of the dense/diffuse contrast, to offer a kind of "rhythm"of change. The parts where the ink was applied more heavily are in the foreground and the background, whereas the space in between them is much lighter in shade and blurred, thus creating a certain rhythm and series of changes in the ink-applied areas.

On the one hand, the artist uses the light techniques used in recent generations of Western art and a certain color technique as the foundation of the work, in order to complete the transformation between bright colors made to be ink-like and ink made to be like bright colors. On the other hand, the artist once again creatively transplants and modifies Western modern art style and composition to create a new visual effect completely different from traditional scholarly paintings.

Actually, Lin Fengmian's landscape subjects are largely not based on writing, but are symbols of a moved heart. Just as he concluded himself, his landscape works are based on memory and technique to depict nature. One can say that "Wild Geese Flying Over the Forest"not only shows beautiful landscapes from nature, but at the same time, conveys an active appreciation of life and a charismatic scholarly and elegant character. The geese he paints are awash in a sort of color like in a dream, becoming symbols of the human character, echoing freedom and desire. In this painting, whether it is a mountain forest or dancing, falling leaves, whether it is a riverbank bursting with springtime or the outline of ink geese, they not only demonstrate the mysterious wonders of nature but are also inspired depictions which rely on the artist's memories, state of mind, and poetic sensibility.

Lin Fengmian's works reveal the highest degree of an artist's power. While exploring the medium of color ink, he breaks new ground in the blending of things Chinese and Western. His works are always able to utilize the viewer's heartfelt reaction to the visual effects created by shapes and color or through either heavy redaubing or light outlining to achieve unity within the painting. Because of Lin's color application brush technique and his emphasis on color in the composition, he achieves a combination of the spirit of Chinese paintings and their heavy, immutable colors, with light colors which retain the character of Western paintings. This integration allows Lin to build a world of multicolor and poetry. The colors of his works are vast and profound; at the same time, for many years, he has been accustomed to emphasizing art's ability to express the artist's emotions, considering art a "feeling"product. One of the ways that this is manifested in his work is that one can experience a poetic atmosphere through the mountain landscapes. The poetic subtleties of his works are profound.

Without a doubt, if we use "multicolored poetry"to describe Lin Fengmian's art style, then through the appreciation and analysis of his "Wild Geese Flying Over the Forest"we can deeply understand the genuine meaning of the phrase "multicolored poetry" we can truly feel its artistic vitality and profound attraction. In studying Lin Fengmian's art, what is truly worth taking the time to comprehend is how his "multicolored poetry"allows us to re-discover and re-create our concept of Chinese artistic expression. This should be considered a precious treasure of 20th century Chinese art modern exploration.

Li Chiao: the author of "A History of Oil Painting in Shanghai"and"A History of Early Period Oil Painting in China" curently teaches at the College of Fine Arts of Shanghai