白统绪水彩艺术精品展暨仟僖雅画廊开幕展
前言
上世纪80年代,我有幸进入湖北省美术院从事专业创作,这在后来20多年的创作经历中,不仅使我有了丰富的创作积累,同时也让我有机会结识了许多像白统绪先生这样德高望重、令人尊敬的师长和前辈,与他们接触并受其教诲,是我的幸运,也让我终身受益。
白统绪先生长期从事水彩画创作,在中国水彩画历史上,他是一位艺术大家,也是相关活动的组织者和发起者;他是承上启下的一代,更是领军人物之一。在我的印象中,谦和、质朴、勤奋,这似乎是他与生俱来的特点;其作品,有着浓郁的生活气息,平和而不失节奏,朴实却不乏灵动,呈现出自然的状态。
如果从艺术史的角度去梳理白统绪先生水彩创作的脉络,会清晰地看到其随着时代和生活的变迁而产生的阶段性变化;倘若从审美的视角来观察白统绪先生不同时期的作品,则可以用写实、相融、抒写来分别对应。上世纪60、70年代,以长江、校园、街道、工地等周遭环境和人物为题材的记录式创作,基本承续西方传统水彩画的写实风格,这些作品既是对生活的摹写,又是时代画卷的展示。至80年代,当改革的浪潮和思想的解放在艺术界生根发芽,进入和震撼着艺术家的心灵,白统绪的作品也逐渐脱离早期固定的创作模式和西方风景画的影响,在写生中融入中国传统水墨的写意,山川湖景、长河落日、春雨秋意、晨曲暮色……无一不显现出润泽通透的水韵和淡淡的诗意。90年代以后,白统绪在创作方式上更为自由,取材和立意别具一格,情景交融;技法上亦更加挥洒自如,取中西绘画之长,将水的特性与色的运用充分结合,于自然之境中抒写着胸中意气。
上善若水,水的智慧在于“利万物而不争”,白统绪先生的身上有着这样一种智慧和精神。在画坛耕耘50余载,孜孜不倦,不追名逐利,观其创作,没有所谓的标新立异和太多的喧嚣浮华,而是在沉稳中常变常新,历久弥醇。正因为如此,白统绪先生的作品具备一种独特的历史价值和不可替代的艺术价值,或者说是二者的和谐统一。那些定格在画面上的物象景观与其间凝聚的种种自然真实的情感,于我们而言,有着共通的意义。因为无论何时,它都能引起我们发自内心的共鸣。在光阴的流转中,这些作品已经嵌入历史的年轮,成为一部积淀与呈现生活的图像证史。
是为序。
傅中望
2013年10月于武昌三官殿1号
Foreword
In the 1980s,life endowed me with the opportunity to join Hubei Provincial Academy of Fine Arts to work as a professional artist. In the following twenty years of artistic creation, I created a large number of artworks, and got to know many respectable and prestigious teachers and senior artists. One of them is Bai Tongxu. I even feel lucky today to have had the opportunity to get in contact with these figures and learn from them, for it turns into a lifelong benefit for me.
For decades, Bai has dedicated himself to creating watercolor paintings. In a historical perspective, he is a master of Chinese watercolor painting, an organizer and initiator of many watercolor painting activities, a watercolor painter of his generation which serves as the connecting link between the preceding and the following generations, and one of the pioneers in the field of watercolor painting. Bai personally strikes me for being innately modest, down-to-earth and diligent, and his works strike me for being naturally full of life, mild and rhythmical, faithful and dynamic.
When we review Bai’s artistic creation from the perspective of art history, we can clearly find that it falls into three different periods based on the changes of times and his personal life, and if reviewed from the perspective of aesthetics, his works in each period are in a different style– realism, mixed styles and free style respectively. In the 1960s and 1970s, his works were the recording of the environment and figures in the artist’s life, such as the Yangtze River, campuses, streets, construction sites and so on. With traditional Western realism of watercolor painting as its main style, the works reflect his personal life as well as the society of that time. In the 1980s, along with the tide of the reform and ideological liberation, artists were gradually influenced. In this period, Bai began to break away from his earlier fixed mode of creation and the impact of Western landscape, and chose to merge the freehand style of traditional Chinese ink and wash painting, depicting mountains, lakes, rivers, sunset, spring rain, autumn sceneries, mornings and evenings with a smooth rhythm of water and a tint of poetry. Since the 1990s, the artist has become even more liberal in his artistic creation. He depicts unique object and concept, and the two perfectly integrate with each other. He fuses Chinese and Western techniques, takes full advantage of water and color, and demonstrates his ambition and ideal through natural scenes.
As Tao Te Ching says, “The highest good is like that of water”. The goodness of water is that it “benefits the ten thousand creatures; yet itself does not scramble”. Bai Tongxu is a person with such goodness and spirit of water. Tirelessly dedicating over fifty years of his life to painting, he seeks neither fame nor interests. His artworks, instead of differentiating themselves by being peculiar or grotesque, sticks to one path which is steady yet full of innovations, so they can endure the test of time. It is this feature that distinguishes Bai’s works with unique historic value and irreplaceable artistic significance. As a matter of fact, they are a perfect combination of the two traits. The natural and authentic feelings crystallized in the images and sceneries in his paintings are commonly owned by all of us, because whenever we appreciate them, we can always sympathize with them from the bottom of our heart. As time passes, the works have already become a part of history, condensing and representing the track of life.
Fu Zhongwang Director
Hubei Museum of Art 1 Sanguandian, Wuchang October 2013