Modernity, Tradition, and  Individuality

       
                    On January 11th,  Yang Fuyin Art Exhibition was held in Guangzhou Painting   Academy. The  refreshing
                    style change is displayed in all his paintings after the solo exhibition in the  National  Museum of China 
                    in 2000, which deeply impressed artists in Beijing. 
                    As a matter of fact, Yang  did not realize the change until he moved from Changsha  to Guangzhou.  In this
                    noisy city, he gets both his life and his heart settled down, shuts  himself in the house, and explores how 
                    to revolutionize Chinese figure  painting. Ten years ago, Yang’s paintings marked for its profound imagery
                    and  intensive scholarly disposition. Now he is renewing both his own history and  the current state of 
                    Chinese figure painting with his whole new individualistic  style. 
                    Among all his recent works, the “body”  series attracts the most attention. Body painting, sometimes, is 
                    made to meet  the vulgar taste, but when I did stand before Yang’s body painting works,  nothing but purity 
                    and depth could be felt. One of Yang’s favorite word “Wu Cai” means nothing but innocence.  With simple 
                    lines, the whole human body is full of life. Such a style inherits  the ancient Chinese painting tradition, but 
                    the spirit belongs to the modern  times, and belongs to China.
                    Yang’s previous works attract audience  with their complexity, which, however, has been completely 
                    replaces by the  fresh and simple beauty in his present works. Yang becomes more and more  confident in
                    the exploration, while his works feature more and more in grandeur  and gracefulness. His confidence also
                    lies in the fact that he applies the  experience gained from figure painting in landscape and flower-and-bird  
                    painting. He further asserts that categorization is unnecessary for Chinese  painting since subjective 
                     feeling outweighs any other factors today. 
                     Nowadays, too many Chinese paintings  are too similar. Most of them are worth only a quick look. But Yang’s
                     works  always keep you standing to sense their deeper meaning. His works are, however,  no experimenting
                     wash paintings but modern Chinese painting in a real sense.  The way Yang calls it, his paintings are “first 
                     modern, second Chinese and  third individualistic”. In his perspective, modernity never means the west 
                     because Chinese also have modern awareness. For Chinese painting, modernity  means the novelty of 
                     painting techniques.
                     Many feel the same way that though Yang already  get white hairs, his works are younger and younger. As 
                     a matter of fact, most  great Chinese painters succeed late in life. Yang’s friend, He Liwei, a  renowned writer 
                     in Hunan,  once said to him, “You always shock us.” Yang, as he always does, dressed in  simple clothes 
                     and cloth shoes, look kind and gentle. What he shocks others is  his renovating and maturing paintings. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                     --Nanfang Daily