Studio one

Guangzhou Daily--Reporter: I heard that you are quite mysterious among scholars in Changsha. Some say you are a god or an unusual genius. I also heard that in your opinion, the eastern culture and western culture meet spiritually. Is there any story about it? Yang Fuyin: I am not a god, but some did comment that I was unusual genius. One was the writer Mo Yingfeng. The other one was the Hongkongnese painter, Zhao Shaoang, the master of Lingnan School of Painting. By the “spiritual meeting”, I mean tai chu wu shi and tai chu wu yan. The understanding of spiritual meeting is based on the nucleuses in one’s very first feeling about the world both in the west and the east. We need to understand it, because it is the most moving part. To feel the world directly means to get rid of the disturbances from theories, means purity and cleanness. With the spiritual meeting in our mind, we won’t get lost when we study, and we can converse on am equal footing. I once talked about Dante’s Divine Comedy in giving lectures to graduate students. The beauty in Dante’s works smiled across the river, which was a distant beauty. The Chinese aesthetics talked a lot about the mirror, the flower, the water, the moon, and the sorrows accumulated by watching them. This is also a distant beauty. This is what I mean by nucleus, and is the essential issue. It has nothing to do with which is superior to which. In this sense, spiritual meeting means thorough understanding. Reporter: What is tai chu wu shi? And what is tai chu wu yan? Yang Fuyin: Tai chu wu shi means at the beginning of the universe, who was the teacher of the primitive people? None. Man had to face the world by himself. Ancient Chinese and ancient Romans had nobody to teach them when they had to face the nature by themselves, but their basic understanding about the world was the same, and this was the basis for spiritual meeting. Take me as another example. I don’t understand Cantonese very well, but I got to know some Cantonese words, and realized that ancient Chinese language was partly kept in Cantonese. For instance, they replace san (“umbrella”) with zhe (“to shade”), which is so primitive but so vivid, because umbrellas are used to keep out rain. San (“umbrella”) is the literal name, and zhe (“to shade”) is how they felt initially about the world, which was the result of tai chu wu yan, that is, at the very beginning no one was able to teach you what it was. More examples include the facts that Changsha people say dishes are used to send in rice, and in Cantonese buying dishes is buying what sends in rice, which are so exact, so vivid and so magical. Another example is, my family always call the remote “the press-button”, which is a name coined to interpret what we feel about the remote. Art is what we feel, and is to speak what we think without the disturbances from theories, experience and others. This is good art. It’s a pity that nowadays man’s feeling has suffered degeneration. Reporter: You live in Guangzhou, but your art gallery is in Changsha. Why? Yang Fuyin: I brought my whole family to Guangzhou in 1993 for a hiding place to see whether I can achieve something there. Now I know whatever you get away on purpose is actually what you cherish most and don’t want to lose most. I’ve lost a lot moving from Changsha to Guangzhou. Changsha is like a bow, and I’m the arrow. The bow can send the arrow anywhere. I’m not exaggerating when I say many people can live on without Changsha, but I can’t. In 2006, Yang Fuyin Art Gallery was set up in the Martyr’s Park in Changsha, one of the ten biggest parks in China. Standing where an on-the-water restaurant used to be several years ago, the Gallery was the first art gallery for individuals in Hunan. Now I go back to Changsha every three months to exhibit for free my new paintings so that the audience will get to know what I’ve been thinking in Guangzhou. Reporter: Which part of the Chu culture moves you most? Yang Fuyin: Chu culture moves me most by its desolation, which is different from the tenderness in the eastern Jiangzhe culture or the wildness in the northwest. What is the beauty of desolation? I once wrote in an essay of the scene of the early winter about the dry willow standing at the bank, a single boat with a broken rope, and no fisherman on the boat. The beauty of desolation is the beauty of solemnity and sadness, and the more impressive beauty. Reporter: I heard that you admire Ba Da very much, and some say they find traces of Ba Da’s paintings in your works. What do you think? Yang Fuyin: My son Dongdong once said, “Daddy, why do your paintings look gorgeous and different?” I think it’s because I stick to our tradition. Too many people take it the single goal for their paintings to look different, but their practice proves the reverse. As the saying goes, the desire to be different makes one nuts. But sometimes I’m afraid of getting too close to tradition. I visited the Terracotta Warriors and the Tomb of Huo Qubing in Shaanxi, but I refused to go in a second time. “Just go, and I’ll wait outside.” I would say to my friends. One’s passion for art can’t be lost this way. I don’t watch the traditional things, but I do learn from the traditional paintings. I want to tell people that I have been studying Ba Da very carefully so far.