The Chinese expression "知黑守白"( pronounced as zhi hei shou bai), which literally means "know the black but cleave to the white" is transformed from the saying dropped by Lao-tzu "He who knows the white yet cleaves to the black becomes the standard by which all things are tested." What it implies has nothing to do with the philosophy that Taoists advocate now. Instead, it refers to an artistic technique adopted in Chinese ink paintings that in creating his work, he should pay attention to the blank space of the painting all the time. Perhaps that's the very source of the name of Mr. Li Shoubai. I think it's impossible for a person without refined artistic taste to figure out such a meaningful name.

　　Fortunately Mr. Li Shoubai was born in such an artist's family from Shanghai with lively artistic atmosphere. Mr. Li Tingyi, his father, is an artist specializing in painting and paper-cutting. Under his laborious guidance, Mr. Li Shoubai began to learn about painting and paper-cutting. Even when he was still studying as a primary school student, his works had already been on show at Shanghai Juvenile Fine Arts Exhibition and published in various newspapers and periodicals. Afterwards he went to Shanghai Arts and Crafts College to continue his further study and take professional training there; and therefore, by adapting himself to the two different teaching methods combining the apprenticeship system with the academic courses imparted in the classes, he studied traditional Chinese painting, folk art and the rudiments of Western painting.

　　Since 1982, his paintings have been successively selected to display in the Shanghai City-based Painting Exhibition and he came to develop his own artistic style. In other words, he touches upon the daily city life with a decorative approach. Just because of his unique style, early in 1990s, he was invited to Singapore and stayed there for 7 years to continue his artistic exploration as a professional painter. Later he went to Japan for the art's sake and lived there for three years. With his overseas study and life he has gained rich experience for his artistic creation and practice in the coming days.

　　Mr. Li Shoubai takes us into the Shikumen buildings by his heavy-color paintings. He was born in Shikumen and grew up there, so he has gained much personal experience and developed a subtle and refined sensibility. He describes the daily life of the city dwellers in Shikumen extravagantly but elegantly: the narrow lanes, a pole with colorful clothes hanging over the lane, a square courtyard with some chairs, the bacons and hams hanging under the eaves, a full basin of laundry at the corner of a lane, and a few kittens hanging about wearily. In these landscapes, he deliberately has the owners absent so that the audience can enjoy quietly the unique tranquility in Shikumen. While seeing the paintings Birds Twittering in the Deep Silent Lanes and Drizzling Silently and so on, I will naturally associate them with the Dutch painter Vermeer. One can always feel a kind of poetical beauty, so familiar and so tranquil, from his paintings elaborating the daily life in his hometown the city of Delft. Perhaps both of them are painting poetically. That's why I make a comparison between them.

　　Mr. Li Shoubai likes to portray figures too. He focuses on painting female figures in his paintings. Among them there are young girls and ladies in the boudoirs. They wear cheongsams, lying in the bed for a break, or hairdressing in front of a mirror, or playing musical instruments, or gathering together for a small talk. Even in the boring days, they want to live gracefully. They are the image speakers of the graceful Shikumen. Of course what is represented in the paintings is not the real life itself but a fond memory and an aesthetical expression of the artist, but the audience would rather believe that it is real because those artworks have successfully communicated a deep love for Shikumen of a native of Shanghai and translated an ideal life to the audience.

　　With a brilliant paint brush Mr. Li Shoubai presents us his art that has absorbed the elements of Chinese and Western paintings in his heavy-color works. His heavy-color paintings stem from traditional Chinese elaborate style with a mixture of heavy color. While engaging in the creation, the painter still employs the line drawing as the sketching, but in the process some lines will be overlain by some flamboyant colors. In coloring he hasn't adopted the traditional Chinese elaborate style with a mixture of heavy color to highlight the painting itself and has introduced chiaroscuro employed in the Western paintings. He casts shadows onto some parts of the figures and buildings so as to leave the audience a stereoscopic impression. Meanwhile the painter employs paper-crumpling, rubbing and rendering methods to achieve a mottled quality and rich texture effect. Among his heavy-color paintings, I find myself always attracted to the crimson latticed windows in them. That is his very creative adoption of the symbolic colors, which leaves us an impression that Shikumen is always filled with happiness.

　　Mr. Li Shoubai brings back to us the scenes in Shikumen which are gradually out of sight in his heavy-color paintings and revivifies the life in his childhood. At the sight of them, we are naturally lost in reminiscence and feel nostalgic. In fact, he has been volunteering to protect the important cultural inheritance. He shares us his personal experience and feelings to recreate the most common and vivid life in Shikumen and preserves the folk customs with rich cultural connotations and historical values via images.

　　I think that sauntering amidst the Shikumen buildings was the life of our previous generation but a luxury for our generation and probably a lost dream for the people of later generations. Although the Shikumen buildings will remain here for good with our better protection of the cultural inheritance, yet the luscious and vivid daily life of the common folks with familiar Shanghai dialect heard everywhere will not remain the same. And then the heavy-color paintings by Mr. Li Shoubai will be of great significance to us.

May, 2012, Vulgarity-free Studio

Zhu Guorong

Consultant of Shanghai Artists Association,

Theorist of Arts History

作者：Zhu Guorong