The "Fang Lijun's Woodcuts" exhibition opened at Hunan Provincial Museum on January 29, 2021. The exhibition reflects his artistic exploration at different stages by combing through hundreds of representative prints created by Fang Lijun since 1982. At the same time, the "Fang Lijun‘s Woodcuts" academic seminar was also held on the Tencent conference online platform on January 31, 2021. Participating guests include: Shu Kewen (academic chair), Ji Shaofeng (curator, director of Hubei Art Museum), Wu Hong Liang (curator, curator of Beijing Art Academy), Dai Zhuoqun (curator), Luo Yalin (Ph.D. of Peking University), Zhang Xiaogang (artist), Hu Bin (Professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts), Wang Duanting (Researcher of Chinese Academy of Art), Cao Qinghui (Professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts) They interpreted Fang Lijun's printmaking art creation from different perspectives such as exhibition planning, art history, and expression techniques, and discussed topics such as the history, current situation and future trends of contemporary printmaking

This article is composed of speeches by Wu Hongliang, curator and curator of Beijing Academy of Fine Arts. He mainly considers the position of Fang Lijun's prints in contemporary Chinese art from the dynamics of social and cultural development.



Wu Hongliang: The Ultimate Expression in Fang Lijun's  Woodcuts

I really got to know Fang Lijun late, but what's interesting is that when I was in college, I had the honor to do a survey on the Old Summer Palace Painters Village. This survey was actually kept in the Contemporary Art Archive. I actually entered with some memories from that time. When I received the relevant materials from Teacher Fang Lijun, I found that Teacher Fang Lijun had done a super complete narrative of art history, and all the details were even specific to one day, and even specific to all the pieces of paper. Therefore, under such a background, I don't know what to write.

I thought there was something else that could touch me. I thought that there is still a painting hanging on the wall of my home. My wife bought a 1998 teacher Fang's print at auction many years ago. I started to experience this print. . On June 10, 2019, I made a special trip to Teacher Fang Fang's studio in Songzhuang to visit him, in fact, to write this article. Therefore, my writing is very narrative, very homely, and direct.

When I watched his work in the studio, the work did not exceed my estimation. I basically understood it in the early stage, but I was surprised by the huge scale. At the same time, I found that there are rows of shelves in the room next to the work. On the shelves, there are wines made by Teacher Fang. He especially emphasized the sentence "Wine must be high." This sentence made me touch a more interesting one. Teacher Fang. So this article finally turned into an article called "Printmaking is a strategy and a high degree of wine." Through this article, I continued my understanding of teacher Fang Lijun's printmaking.

In this process of understanding, I want to start with the 1998 work with a bald head swimming with a face covered. The line on the back of the head of this work is double lines. I don’t know which one is right or wrong, but the "over line" itself It is super valuable.

When we were studying traditional Chinese painting, for example, Huang Zhou's traditional Chinese painting had a concept of "overlining" because he started from sketching. It didn't feel inaccurate to draw on one stroke. He felt that if he was next to another stroke, his strength would be better. Strong. So the two strokes at the back of the head in this painting are super valuable. There are also shadow processing. I have also tried some prints, especially black and white woodcut prints. The conversion of black and white relations is a big event. For example, Mr. Huang Xingbo is a master of super black and white conversion, and Fang Lijun converts such black and white (about the part of shadows). ) It is done in water, and the nature of such a conversion is technically worthy of discussion. There is also a knife-pen relationship. This feeling is very similar to Qi Baishi's way of doing seal carving and using a knife as a pen. This writing process may be related to the "liberation" discussed by Teacher Ji Shaofeng.

Speaking of liberation, there is a perception of teacher Fang Lijun's sense of freedom, but all the freedom to make prints is actually a logic that has a huge rational control. I'm not saying from the perspective of human personality, but people who are engaged in printmaking have experienced such training. When I was doing an exhibition of Mr. Huang Yongyu’s prints at the Beijing Academy of Fine Arts last year, I wrote a very short text. Two points of it can be linked to the work of Teacher Fang Lijun.

First, printmaking is the most fundamental creative energy of these artists. Of course, teacher Fang Lijun may be different from Huang Yongyu. Huang Yongyu is rooted in prints, but Fang Lijun still has a ceramic piece. Whether it is ceramics or prints, it is his rational thinking and superb control energy. Like Teachers Cao Qinghui and Teacher Hu Bin have mentioned, he has a particularly strong combination ability and coordination ability, and even the ability of system integration. These artists assume that what they see seems to be relatively free. For example, Teacher Fang will have some appearances of sword walking and uninhibited, but what is behind? I made a metaphor for Mr. Huang Yongyu. We all thought that Mr. Huang was like Monkey King. He was a Monkey King. In fact, what is he more like? He is more like Tathagata. His "fun" and "playing" are for us to see, and the part behind him is rational and controlled. This may be my personal feeling when I contacted Teacher Fang Lijun. They seem to have such a feeling. Some commonalities.

What I want to talk about later is what a few teachers talked about earlier, including three points about teacher Fang Lijun’s artistic creation:

One is the scale;

The second is the quantity;

The third is "ontology".

The scale is undoubtedly a super service of Fang Lijun to the museum. This era is the era of museums and art gallery exhibitions. Since the Republic of China, this kind of service system began. Teacher Cao must be familiar with the national art exhibitions during the Republic of China. Chinese paintings and oil paintings were carried out separately, and they were divided into art exhibitions. Why did they exhibit in different spaces? Because their tension is different. I think it is a kind of appeal of artists of this era since the 1990s. Fang Lijun did more extreme. He thought of a set of prints. He needed to occupy the space of the museum and art gallery. He even built his studio. I think this is very planned. And I interviewed some artists at the time. Many artists sold a painting as soon as they had it. In fact, it was a way to survive. But he moved forward more strategically. What he thought of was a greater opportunity for exhibition and a chance to be selected. Fang Lijun used scrolls in his creation. I think it helped him a lot, because it can be exhibited in multiple institutional spaces at the same time, and the operating cost is extremely low. This is a Chinese scroll album, especially Hand scrolls and albums, contributions to the spread of human art.

Let’s take a rough look. In the secondary market, there are three artists who are the most active in the world. Among them, the Chinese is Qi Baishi, Picasso and Andy Warhol. The number of their works is the base number of 30,000. This This kind of circulation will construct a good secondary market cycle. Qi Baishi and Picasso live longer, Andy Warhol live shorter. Of course, Andy Warhol is spreading with printmaking techniques.

Fang Lijun also found a very effective method. These methods are not only from the Central Academy of Fine Arts system, because the woodcuts of the Central Academy of Fine Arts system include copperplates, silk screens, and stone plates, but these methods are not the original traditional Chinese woodcut methods. Traditional Chinese woodcuts such as Many methods used by Rongbaozhai are called gluttonous version. In Fang Lijun's work, gluttonous plates are widely used, which means that it is not only the size relationship, but the repeated use of color superposition on a board, which makes the cost of painting extremely low and the completion of the work extremely fast.

The symbol of the bald head also contributes to the spread of the flames, and what is the metaphor of the bald head in an era? In the existing explanations, there are actually many interesting phenomena. These explanations may not be entirely the original intention of Teacher Fang. We, as spectators, have superimposed this mechanism over and over again.

The last thing I want to talk about is ontology. When I mentioned that when I watched that painting, I actually didn't want to analyze it from the historical narrative or the concept of symbols, or the contemporary art concept. In a longer system, when the historical background and story in the work disappear, whether the knife, color, and line of the work have a more supportable ornamental value, at least I feel it in this painting.

The word "print" is also very interesting. The right side of "print" is "anti". This kind of "anti" thinking energy is probably unique to printmakers, and such a technique is used in the creation of Teacher Fang, if His ontological value can be effectively integrated with many of the history, times and his stories we tell today. He should have a high-level wine in art. Only when he enters this high-level wine state, it is like his ceramics must be at 1200 degrees or even 1250 degrees before a good porcelain can be constructed to reach a high point.