It was April Fool's Day when he arrived in Paris, but he made a clever decision: to go to the Louvre at once.
He didn't flaunt his title as a painter in China. Since his first visit to France, he has consciously moved from "cultural edge" to "art center".
Someone said humorously that Zhao Wuji, a French China painter, was personally proved by Napoleon and the Japanese Emperor to be a contemporary world-class painter. He has successively won the Knight Medal, the Officer Medal and the Commander Medal formulated by Napoleon; Among them, the Commander's Medal, according to Napoleon's standards, can only be obtained by great French artists who enjoy world reputation. As for the Royal Japanese Award he won in 1994, it is undoubtedly the top award in the international art world today.
Critics awarded him the title of master of abstract lyric painting. However, if you ask him what a painting with a price of $200,000 to $300,000 is, he will smile and say to you in an apologetic tone, "If I can say it, I won't draw it."
He was lucky to be born in a family. His grandfather was a scholar and his father was a banker and collector. He was fortunate to be well educated. After finishing Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, he was able to 1948 come to Paris with $30,000 and live in Mon Bahners, where artists live. This fulfilled a famous saying of Agathon, an ancient Greek tragic poet: Art loves luck, and luck loves art.
However, he also experienced great misfortune in the spiritual world. His childhood sweetheart's first wife, after living with him for sixteen years, left with someone else. His spirit would have collapsed long ago if what he called "painting refuge" had not provided him with spiritual shelter. The second wife, a Hong Kong film actress, had a beautiful appearance. She lived with him in Paris for many years and suddenly became schizophrenic, ending her beautiful life. At that time, he drank whisky all day, and friends in the painting world called him "Zhao Whiskey" helplessly. Also, as a part of his life, his relatives and friends were taken away by death one by one prematurely. For example, my father died during the Cultural Revolution in China, my younger brother died of gas poisoning and my younger brother died of cancer. His best confidante in French art, his "patron saint of art", the poet Michelle, and Mian, who recommended him to the world, all died suddenly ... In my many interviews with him, he said that both the great misfortune of love and the great misfortune of losing relatives and friends had driven him to paint himself in various periods, which made him have the possibility of shock. On China's Ancient Paintings: "Love is the embryo of poetry". For Zhao Wuji, "love is the embryo of painting". Therefore, Zhao Wuji's artistic experience complements the famous saying of Agathon, an ancient Greek poet: art loves misfortune, and misfortune loves art.
People are always interested in the reasons why celebrities become celebrities. Zhao Wuji's third wife, Vanswa Ma Kai, also asked about an important "mechanism" for the immigrant painter Zhao Wuji to become famous in France. When writing a biography of Zhao Wuji, Brahma found that he met many "mainstream" figures in French society as soon as he arrived in Paris, and he was very curious about it. He asked, "How did you make friends with painters who are now exhibiting in art galleries and publishers who are competing to publish books for them as soon as you arrived in Paris, and how did you know your friends who are now great writers and famous doctors? Paris is so big, they are not all concentrated in one room! " Zhao Wuji shook his head and said he didn't know.
I know. When I interviewed Zhao Wuji, I heard that he arrived in Paris on the afternoon of April 1948 (April Fool's Day), but he made a clever decision: go to the Louvre at once. "I just stood in front of the novels, poems and literary works of Mona Lisa, Botticelli and angeli Ke, and I saw another kind of painting completely different from Chinese painting! Although I have a good grasp of China's ink painting, I don't want to take shortcuts or show off China Kung Fu in France. I don't want to be labeled as a painter in China. When you get to someone else's place, you must climb to the peak of others. " He knew Mon Bahners was a gathering place for French artists, so he rented a house there. Psychologically, he took the initiative to dismantle barriers, and geographically, he naturally made many "mainstream figures" in the French art world. It can be seen that as soon as he arrived in France, he consciously ran from the edge to the center.
Let's assume that if Zhao Wuji, like many China painters who came to Paris later, plunged into the cultural circle of China as soon as he came to Paris, rented a house near China and kept painting things with "China characteristics", such as selling Zen and Taoist ink paintings or oil paintings to the French art world, what would he do? In this way, he will feel very convenient, even in the first days. However, decades later, Zhao Wuji, who has the "genius hardware", will always be on the edge of French society like those immigrant painters who usually take shortcuts, and will go from bad to worse, and may even paint portraits for tourists on the street next to Notre Dame. ...
Zhao Wuji also has a famous saying: It's easy to become famous, but difficult to stay in it. He painted in France for half a century and has been leading * * *. The secret is to constantly sublate your once successful self, that is, to have great courage to launch a subversive coup against your success. However, don't think that Zhao Wuji's abstract art is pure French art. No, Claude Hua, a famous French poet, said that his lyric abstract painting is an outstanding representative of the integration of eastern and western cultures. He said: "Zhao Wuji strongly refuted the dangerous myth that different cultures are opposed to each other and that eastern and western cultures are fundamentally incompatible." Zhao Wuji not only falsified the myth of cultural opposition, but also proved a story of cultural integration: as long as two high-quality cultures of the East and the West are achieved, their creative integration is natural, just like the marriage of men and women, the fusion of two different gene chains, thus creating the most unique life, which is a natural and automatic process.
The 78-year-old French painter Zhao Wuji made a special trip back to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the exhibition. The reporter met Zhao Wuji, who was taciturn and elegant. His reticence is a bit surprising, but it also makes people realize another kind of demeanor. He thinks that the best explanation for himself is to read his novels, poems and literary works, not to listen to what he says.
Zhao Wuji is one of the most outstanding abstract masters in world painting in the 20th century. The novels, poems and literary works exhibited in Beijing faithfully reflect his creative process: from the figurative painting style of his student days to the abstract expressionist masterpieces of his mature period. The exhibition itself tells a beautiful story, showing people the mental journey of an old man returning to his hometown and an artist becoming an outstanding creator in today's world.
Zhao Wuji was born in an ancient family in Beijing in 192 1. His family tree can be traced back to the royal family in the Song Dynasty. Every year on the day of ancestor worship, the Zhao family takes two family heirlooms-Zhao Meng's (trillion pages) and Mi Fei's paintings. Young Zhao Wuji especially worships Miffy, and this worship continues to this day: "He is a painter who observes with the other eye."
After Zhao Nanqian moved, his father Zhao Hansheng worked as an amateur painter in Shanghai Qianzhuang, and this artistic cell was passed on. Zhao Wuji was able to draw when he was 10. He finished primary and secondary school in Shanghai and loved literature and history. 1935, when he 14 years old, he was admitted to Hangzhou Art Institute to study painting. Six years later, he graduated and stayed as a teacher. In the same year (194 1), he held his first solo exhibition in Chongqing.
Through postcards and American magazines published in China at that time, Zhao Wuji found his own artistic coordinates: Renoir, Modigliani, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso ... these masters were considered closer to his nature by him. From 65438 to 0948, with the support of his father, Zhao Wuji decided to go to Paris for further study with his wife, Xie Jinglan, and started a new road of artistic exploration. In the following years, he sketched and traveled in Europe and America. With the rising popularity, he held many exhibitions in various countries and made friends with many artists. 196 1 year, Zhao Wuji made friends with andre malraux, the author of The Temptation of the West, and malraux was then the French Minister of Culture. Under his care, Zhao Wuji became a French citizen on 1964.
When Zhao Wuji moved to France, it was the time when European abstract painting and American abstract Expressionism painting came together. Zhao Wuji followed this artistic trend and soon turned to abstract exploration. This painting breaks away from narrative factors and uses abstract symbols to express the pure symbolic meaning beyond objects and images. His painting style has undergone major changes. Since the late 1950s, he abandoned pictographs and turned to express his spirit and express his feelings in a more direct way. He used a lot of free bubbles to express his feelings, and described his fantasies in confusing colors, light and complex and changeable spatial structure. After 1959, his novels, poems and literary works were all named after the date of creation, in order to let the audience directly experience the artistic conception of painting without being influenced by any factors outside the picture. Zhao Wuji formed his own unique abstract painting style at this time. Compared with some abstract paintings in the west that emphasize rational structure, his novels, poems and literary works have the characteristics of free lyricism, and compared with other completely unconscious abstract paintings, his novels, poems and literary works have profound spiritual connotations.
People follow one tradition and I follow two traditions. Zhao Wuji said the same thing when interviewed in France. His extraordinary artistic course and the charm of novels, poems and literary works are the perfect embodiment of the richness and creativity of cultural exchanges between China and the West. In Zhao Wuji's artistic creation for more than half a century, he blended Chinese and Western cultures, made full use of the expressions of western culture, and vividly displayed China's aesthetic thoughts with rich cultural connotations. After entering middle age, Zhao Wuji's oil painting skills became more and more skillful, and his colors became bright and bright. The picture focuses on the pursuit of space and light, including various elements of nature such as heaven, earth, water and fire, and the atmosphere is getting calmer and calmer. In his later years, his paintings became more perfect. On the one hand, he conveyed the vitality of nature; On the other hand, he turned into an image outside the image, which further embodied the unique spiritual realm of China's philosophy, namely, the unity of heaven and man, emptiness and selflessness. In the 1960s, in a survey of overseas Chinese living in France, Zhao Wuji replied: "If the influence of Paris is undeniable during my whole growth as an artist, I must say that with the deepening of my thoughts, I gradually rediscovered China. My recent paintings naturally reflect China. Perhaps paradoxically, this far-reaching return to nature should be attributed to Paris. "
Returning to China to hold exhibitions is the long-cherished wish of Mr. Zhao Wuji, who lives abroad. When his artistic career reached its peak and his artistic style was fully mature, he collected more than 100 fine exhibitions of his 60-year creative achievements, which became precious gifts for Beijing. Faced with such rich, exquisite and pleasing novels, poems and literary works, people in the art world are amazed, and think that his early creation has a high starting point and is worthy of being one of the most outstanding artists in contemporary times. Mr. Fan Dian, vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and an art critic, said in an interview: China's fine arts in the 20th century have many cultural representations, the most prominent of which is the transformation of China's fine arts under the collision of Chinese and Western cultures. Before the historical topic of Sino-Western cultural relations, many artistic sages answered with lifelong exploration, among which Mr. Zhao Wuji's contribution is unique. His life journey from China to the West and his artistic course of combining Chinese and Western culture from the West to China show his continuous and conscious cultural orientation. Of course, his legendary life contribution has also been richly rewarded. With the inspiration and talent of China people, he gained a firm foothold in the international art world, while other painters easily lost themselves in front of the western painting system-classical, modern and contemporary fascinating and dazzling works of art. Zhao Wuji grasped the artistic tradition of China since the Tang and Song Dynasties with higher cultural knowledge. His paintings have the style of China from the Five Dynasties to the Northern Song Dynasty, which can be summarized by the word "famous car", which is a very high realm.
Zhao Wuji, Chinese-born French painter. Born in Beijing, China. When I was a child, I studied in Nantong, Jiangsu, where I studied painting. 65438-0935 entered Hangzhou Art College and studied under Lin Fengmian. 1948 went to study in France and settled in France. In his painting creation, he participated in the traditional culture and art of China with the form of modern western painting and the color skills of oil painting, creating a new painting space with changeable colors, strong brushwork and brisk pace, and was called "the representative of modern western lyric abstraction". At present, he is a lifelong painter of the French gallery, a professor at the National Institute of Decorative Arts in Paris, and was awarded the French Knight's Order. He has held more than 160 solo exhibitions around the world. 20 13 On the afternoon of April 9, Zhao Wuji died in Vaud, Switzerland, at the age of 92.
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