Academic Host: Ge Qiantao
Curator: Jin Xi
Female Figure Painting by He Yi
Wang Hongyi
Female figure painting has always been an important topic in western arts. It has the same significance of landscape painting in the Chinese art. Needless to say, there is very little of body painting in traditional Chinese painting. Not mentioning the clay sculpture in ancient times, even those famous goddesses in Dunhuang murals, their limbs and bodies are quite rigid. Ancient artists were expressing perfect images through wrinkles and lines of clothing but they had only abstract understanding of human physiology. Therefore, when we close our eyes to recount those Chinese paintings throughout history, we would see many floating lines, elegant coloring and gentle poetry. Nonetheless, few of them are works for human bodies through a natural view. Whether they are naked muscle of those heavenly kings, or waistlines of heavenly goddesses, all of them are conceptual and stiff. It can be concluded as a natural deficiency in traditional Chinese culture.
The field of painting has changed since the 20th century. Under the influence and appeal of western art, there also have been some figure paintings in China along with some artists specializing in figure painting, such as Lin Fengmian, who focuses on topics as flora, landscaping and female. His remarkable achievement goes without saying. Masters like those are rare and many figure paintings from contemporary artists are no more than practicing works far from artistic expression of figure painting. Perhaps, it has something to do with the current educational system. Besides art academies, there is few institutions conduct research on human physiology from an artistic point of view. Therefore the techniques for figure expression of Chinese artists are originated from art academies. Many artists who are good at figure paintings come out of classrooms of art academies and go on to galleries, exhibitions or auction houses. It is easy for them to be limited with the classroom techniques from those art academies. From the point of view of art display, the figure paintings from galleries and exhibitions should be different from those figure painting homework from classrooms. Homework is for practicing; art work is for displaying. There are two sets of rules for judgment. The former is based on rules and latter is all about debauchery. The former is realistic and the latter is freehand or abstract. The former concentrates on technique training and the latter concentrates on emotional expression. The former demonstrates group order and the latter carries individual ambition. Of course, this is only a general reference. There are also individual exceptions. No one can prevent anyone else to play ‘arts’ in the classroom or being a lifelong “realist”. From this point of view, the human figure paintings from He Yi are obviously expressive. In other words, these works emphasizes on emotional expression rather than techniques. Therefore, his painting technique is simple understatements, ink dripping and the picture is similar to the clear effect of watercolor painting.
The works I saw were created by He Yi from 2007 to 2009. These works from different years have a unified theme and personal style. They are all about female figures that are vague, almost monochrome, with indoor settings, freehand strokes, chilly mood and somewhat strange. Frankly, I have not seen this kind of figure painting before. I was constantly searching in my mind, for the traditional style that was close to this. It is the figure paintings from the expressionist painter Munch ( Edvard Munch, 1863-1944), whose paintings have similar floating strokes and simplistic figures. However, the aesthetic styles from the two are utterly different. He Yi is more sentimental and soft and Munch is fleshy, muscular and powerful. This simple contrast reflects a significant cultural difference from the east and west. Weak, romantic and ambiguous may be the interpretation of females in the popular culture of China, such as stated in the novel A Dream of Red Mansions, women are made of water. He Yi’s works present us this cognition in the form of images, with the color of water, motion of water and sound of water to construct a world with many cool pictures. Those lonely female figures, with vague faces, sometimes lying or standing, soft bodies stretching like water, are floating evasively. The surrounding of the body is always plain quietness, like the lonely emptiness inside a heart, difficult to grasp. Sometimes, the embellishing furniture implies the surroundings in which the body inhabits, chairs, bed, TV, flower petals, bottles, fruits, staircases, skylight, electrical fans all twisted, mesmerized like spirits, which are pieces of complex memories.
Reading the picture till now, I faintly felt that the works from He Yi were full of loneliness and cold in the spiritual realm. It is far from the noisy atmosphere of today’s society. They are personal, private, silent shapes and colors, as deep meditation escaping from reality, overthrowing those complex and awkward modes commonly seen in modern figure painting. It does not win by brutal force, instead it uses tender reflexes. It is the unique modeling vocabulary from the new generation of artists. This kind of art works of figure painting can comfort the heart and soul of the audience and it can be a ray of spiritual glimmer that young artists contribute in the time of material decadency.
