Text / Li Yong, Lu Jing
Unlike other painters, Xu Qiubin is a baritone singer. Because of the superiority of the innate sound quality, the young man was found and recommended to the Chinese national folk art school (now is the Guo Lanying Academy of Art), and became the top student of the older generation artist Guo Lanying.
During the period of school, he won the painting prize that the painting majors students in the same school haven’t won, because of his keen capture of the art of calligraphy and painting, it’s all happened unexpected and naturally.
Xu Qiubin had an innate hobby of art from his childhood, he not only loves music, but also love poetry, calligraphy and painting related to art, this honor in school inspired him more deeply, and laid down his calligraphy from a singer to a painter in the future.
Art is interlinked, this is from the perspective of understanding art, but music and painting are specific to skills and creation, and indeed are two different categories of professional performance. From singer to painter, Xu Qiubin's physical and mental experience has undergone many transformations and sublimation.
In order to further develop his own artistic career, Xu Qiubin moved to Beijing, in 1994, took the central Orchestra Mr. Wu Qihui as his teacher, and in collaboration with famous conductors such as Nie Zhongming, Huang Qiuyuan, Li Huade, Qiu Li, Yang Jiemin, Yu Feng, Yan Liangkun, and other famous conductors in the Beijing Concert Hall, Zhongshan music hall, Pauli theatre, the Century Theatre, the worker's gymnasium, the Forbidden City, and the China century altar.
He also participated in all the national tours in the early 90s as the first major singer of Guo Lanying Art Troupe. But he didn't go along this bright path, he chose the painting that he longed for a long time due to the influence of innate artistic elements in his body.
The practice has proved that Xu Qiubin's transformation is successful, first of all, based on the grasp of traditional calligraphy and painting, he has laid the basic skills of poetry and calligraphy, especially for calligraphy, Xu Qiubin is well versed in regular, cursive, running, official script, with the ancient taste and new sense.
Emphasizing the expression and publicity of personality has always been the artistic concept that he insisted, but the "display" and "expression" are not a tree without root, and not water without a source, their foundation is the traditional brush and ink foundation.
Xu Qiubin understood that if he firmly rooted in the traditional Chinese fertile soil, his art could grow sturdily. So Xu Qiubin takes calligraphy into painting, no matter how innovative changes, always the same. This is the basic reason for his painting creation, though it is varied in appearance, but it will not be angry or impetuous at all.
On the contrary, because of the freehand brushwork of calligraphy and the personalized artistic symbols of ink and wash, the picture is full of meaningful and refreshing flavor, fresh and thick. Secondly, Xu Qiubin is a very individual artist. He has a distinct personal view of people and things, and he has always discarded the swim with the stream.
As a person, this character makes Xu Qiubin's paintings have a style of stylization, and he put his ideas and impressions on life and impression of the world with different expressions.
For example, in his recent works, the road of black stone has always appeared, and the allegory black stone appears in the smooth or winding road, which allows the viewer to see the unevasive, tough and helpless in the whole picture, so that people are not reminded of the way of life: luck and misfortune are all bumpy.
This road makes the picture have a strong allegorical nature, full of mysterious and rational atmosphere.
Sometimes, Xu Qiubin simply writes his diary directly in the works that are deliberately and visually, to annotate and enhance the visual effect of the picture.
He always shows his intention clearly and firmly in the picture, the thick ink and the bright pure color intertwined, accompanied by the rational thinking of the artist, so that the picture has a kind of unpleasant tension, which is his expectation, which brings the unprecedented weight of the picture.
Oriental painting and Western painting aesthetic connotation are not the same, but in today's information society high-speed development today, the East and west culture all the time in the exchange of collisions, this exchange and collision in every corner of the art life.
The author believes that contemporary western painting is not only a simple coverage of realism and objective vision, but also rich humanistic care in Western painting. Compared with the Oriental painting, the western humanities paintings have more sense of stream of consciousness and rational spirit, and the Oriental painting is sublimated and refined with a higher attitude.
Xu Qiubin's painting shows the original structure of the Oriental brush and ink, which combines the stream of consciousness and the rational spirit of western humanistic painting to extract the product. In brief, this innovative form of Xu Qiubin is a kind of "image" expression in Chinese painting.
The author believes that contemporary western painting is not only a simple coverage of realism and objective vision, but also rich humanistic care in Western painting. Compared with the Oriental painting, the western humanities paintings have more sense of stream of consciousness and rational spirit, and the Oriental painting is sublimated and refined with a higher attitude.
Xu Qiubin's painting shows the original structure of the Oriental brush and ink, which combines the stream of consciousness and the rational spirit of western humanistic painting to extract the product. In brief, this innovative form of Xu Qiubin is a kind of "image" expression in Chinese painting.
This series of works is painted on the basis of Carmen, a representative of the French realism writer merrim. It tells the love story of the unrestrained gypsy girl Carmen. In the four works of "Carmen", a woman's shadow is painted indistinctly, the woman seems to be visible and invisible, but there is no exception with a flaming red lip, as the gypsy girl's passionate and unrestrained character are very striking.
This group of works adopts abstract expression, with the author's strong personal idea, metaphor and freehand, Xu Qiu Bin expressed his impression of Carmen in ink and wash, which brought a new aesthetic feeling to the audience.
If the series of "Carmen" shows the story of the opera, then the sister text of this group, "Carmen Arias", expresses the author's "Carmen" in another way of expression, which emphasizes the musical expression of the melodies. The strong colors, the melodious brushwork and the rhythmic composition highlight the musicality of the picture, and you look at the picture. It seems to be able to hear the euphemism of the arias!
As an experimental work of Xu Qiubin, Carmen's painting series is a successful and novel way of expression. He brings the opera into the artistic creation and makes the two-dimensional space of the plane infinitely extended.
This three-dimensional and multi-dimensional expression technique of narrative, lyric and music are of great significance for the development and innovation of Chinese painting.
Xu Qiubin is a diligent artist, and he is brave to try and practice. He often says that thinking is very important to an artist. The artist is not a painter, the skill is only a tool, and the flashing point of thought is the most valuable wealth in the painting.
But thought is not a horse in the bud. Xu Qiubin realized it clearly. Only when he inherits the traditional culture well, can he innovate and develop.
Whenever I think of Shi Tao's theory of painting, Xu Qiubin felt great emotion. Hundreds of years ago, the ancients also had the momentum and courage of "I use my law". What's more, today's people?
And encouraged with Qiu Bin together!
Li Yong, Lu Jing / Text