I first saw Zhang Jian's works in a small painting album. In 1995, he held an exhibition together with two friends where I saw the catalogue. At that time his works saw obvious influence from Renoir. The sun shone on the model through leaves, surrounded by flourish grape frame and fresh grassland. Then I had just a trance of seconds-his background in CAFA was clearly seen for we could still see trueborn painting of the impressionism in his works even at that time……Then I saw his works off and on, common sceneries, common people, but comfortable and nice looking. Years later, in an openning ceremony of an exhibition, I met him face to face and he was such a comely, exquisite, elegant and quiet person, which was quite in harmony with his works style. It's been long since I had the desire to write on him, then I started.

　　The Shinning Sun

　　A day in the summer, bright sunshine, warm and comfortable temperature, girls in skirts.

　　In Zhang Jian's paintings, there are basically outdoor sceneries and enchanting colors, bright and clear sky, transparent atmosphere, all perfect even without any impurity in smell. The sunshine was absolutely the sheer power source in Zhang Jian's early paintings. Still when he was studying in CAFA he was not quite interested in the tasks from class but spent quite a lot of time on life painting on the campus. Such "old-fashioned" way was right the starting point of his later creation.

　　After graduation, he rent a room in the east side of a Quadrate Yard in the north and continued his research on the impressionism and life painting. For a couple of years, he had been far away from the jollification in Beijing, also had nothing to do with Yuanmingyuan and Songzhuang. His works were neither of traditional school painting nor something related to the avante-gard. He would just persisted in his career choice as a professional painter if he could make a living from selling works. As his research on Monet, Renoir and Ganguin reached to some extent, the color in his paintings began gradually conceptualized. Of course, there was still strong sunshine in, but with greater contrast of brightness and darkness, more summarized color and brushworks, even sometimes glaring sunshine.

　　Within five years from graduation in 1993 to 1998, Zhang Jian had been continuing his life painting. Later, the sunshine and colors in his works became more and more subjective, details step by step were given up in shaping, facula under the shadow disappeared, people began to appear in the vast grassland, original way of moulding with fairly high degree of realism turned into large area of flat painting with pure color. It was a period of time shifting from objective to subjective, in which his works mainly presented sunshine at noon in summer, with strong direct shining power, dizzing and glaring. The clear and crisp image was so quiet that inspired extremely sincere psychological feelings. Whenever see it, I will make such an association of the aside in the starting paragraph of The Sunny Days: "……It seems that those days were always in the summer, the sun always came out to accompany us, providing us with abundant sunshine, too bright to dizze. "①

　　Blue and Black-and-White

　　Blue, in clear and bright daytime, sky and water, merge in one color.

　　In the process of studying and researching the impressionism, Zhang Jian had been looking for a kind of "location" suitable for presenting things similar to light shadow and color. In 2000, he found Houhai. Houhai is actually a lake where there is considerable water though in the downtown area. It is neither openned only with tickets in daytime as Beihai nearby, nor closed at night. It is surrounded by residents with leisurable life sense. There are willows and railings at lakesides, ships in the water and whenever summer comes, there are people fond of swimming emerging in  the water-all these are quite suitable for painting, also its geographical characteristics are not so obvious. So Zhang Jian described such visual image as "You can also say that it is Europe". After the SARS in 2003, outdoor bars clustered in Houhai, people all rushed to Houhai, forming a noisy scene……Of course, for Zhang Jian at that time, such situations were still for a later story.

　　In 2000, Zhang Jian found a model to post and took photos at lakeside still fairly quiet, began his Houhai series with blue as the main tone-blue lake water, blue sky, blue clothing and hats. There were lovers and swimmers wandering around the lake, who were originally the main objects in his painting, with clothing simplified into minimum in proficient and experienced way of brush painting and vague emotional tendency. However, just one or two years later, people originally in the main role began to immerge into the sceneries, lake surface and the sky began the subjects of the works. After the "portrait" turned into "landscape", Zhang Jian's emotions in the image became purer and the simple and brief effects enhanced the openning degree of the meanings; Houhai was reverted into water surface of common meanings, swimmers were not clear to see and what we could see were only waves and dimples in the surface. In this stage, rays in Zhang Jian's works became soft and the noon became the dask, time became more and more uncertain, the original narrative basically disappeared. For some time, such uncertainty was even evolved into absolute color-free, the real and specific sceneries became black-and-white illusions in the dream, seemingly like faded photos, untraceable in the lost of conjecture.

　　Vast and Empty Beijing

　　The city, quiet but clean, common but meaningful.

　　Seeing Tian'anmen, Chang'an Street and Houhai in Zhang Jian's paintings, subconsciously I think he turned Beijing back-at least to the 80s of last century. At that time, there weren't so many people in the streets, nor so many vehicles, the atmosphere was good and people had been accustomed to the blue sky and white clouds. People were not so tense and did not have so strong sense of time. There were no private cars, mobile phones, computers and MSN, but people were still satisfied. Though we could still see some new sceneries of new times in his works, the atmosphere and moods in the image never belonged to the current busy and crowded times. Time stopped, clocks became silent, the illusions of emptiness and quietness seemed to make these sceneries more eternal.

　　Soon after Houhai series, Zhang Jian also began another series-moulding for this city accompanying him.

　　Zhang Jian said that he was not a painter of reminiscence and there was no special meanings of retrospecting the past days in his works, but from the purposely selected objects in his picturs, his profesion was doubtful. Today's Beijing has already become a crowded and noisy huge city, with people and vehicles flowing among streets, but in Zhang Jian's landscape painting of Beijing, you can see nearly a Xanadu without noise and pollution. The painter ignored the true appearance of the city, which indicated his active pursue of aesthetic visual tendency, but for his avoidence of reminiscence, we can only explain it as passive run-away of certain clear definition.

　　Zhang Jian's Beijing has great difference with that of other artists. The most obvious is that the color of ideology was weakened and lightened. Except for Tian'anmen back to distance in the image, Zhang Jian also painted some symbolized locations like Chang'an Street with irregular and mixed old and new buildings and Jianguomen, as well as old buildings hidden behind the green pavement at the roadsides like Beijing Hotel and the Culture Palace of the Nationalities, reminding people of the hand painted settings in theaters and studios. The true and specific life scenes were reverted to the most basic visual forms, without significant narrative meanings, only common mood wished to speak but stopped.

　　Just Art for Art's Sake

　　"What I dream of is an art of balance, or purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter , an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue." ② The quote of Henry Matisse is commonly used by artistis advocating the formalism for among them there are more people with aesthetic tendency.

　　For years, I have been carefully observing the self-sufficiency of the concept "Contemporary Chinese Art", though I have also constantly used it in talks and articles. Actually, to make this concept come into existence, the first thing to discuss is whether the object we are talking about is art or not. Further speaking, to define what is "good art", the first to consider is the art itself. But those attributes added to the art, for example, "classic art", "modern art", "traditional art", "contemporary art", "post-modern art", etc., will always lead to attendence to trifles and neglect of the essentials, when pursuing and showing off the so-called "academic things" and "knowledge", the due "common sense" of the core concept of "art" is lost.

　　If make a simple analysis on the art history influencing Zhang Jian's paintings, except for those impressionistic masters, Edward Hopper, Gerhard Richter and David Hockney should also be in the list. Those visual resources provided him enlightenment of language and techniques, based on which his unique style became striking. In recent years, I have been paying attention to his pursue of "Uncertainty" and "Uncertain Feelings". Early in 2003, there was fairly complanatic and graphic tendency in Zhang Jian's paintings, though only a unnoticeable branch in his works, it was a kind of personal language he cared about and carefully developed. He began more attentive to purer graphic visual forms and those most basic language composing the pictures. For example, in part of his works presenting Houhai in winter, trails left on the ice surface by the skaters and snow flakes flying around formed nearly graphic illusion of abstract painting, but in large amount of swimming themes, the image of people were largely omitted.

　　Zhang Jian's works are simple and pure, without any profound philosophic theories and concepts. He is good at viewing surrounding daily sceneries from common and plain vision and not looks into the meanings behind the signs, without any purpose of symbolization. In a series of his latest works, he began to present buildings besides Chang'an Street with part strikingly featured. To different viewers, these walls, roofs, windows and balconies formerly common might contain different meanings……Actually, seen from Zhang Jian's persistent style, this step could be regarded as further close to "contemporary" in the meaning,, but also "purity" in the "form". In art market where there are the speculation of signs and meanings and crazy hucksterings, he created a "non-narrative"  and "non-theme" world in realistic way. His way of using various kinds of image elements surpassed the traditional "realistic way" but more close to the attitude of abstract artists when pondering.

　　I once heard of a comment saying that Zhang Jian's paintings were quite good, but "too beautiful" and not so "contemporary " enough. The painter himself may also had such kind of similar doubt if his things had any relation to the "contemporary art". My opinion is that it is enough for an artist to wholeheartedly pay attention to "art", "contemporary" or not is the question for future artists to think about (they may not yet be born), there is no need for us to care about.

​Jan. 29th, 2007

　　Notes:

　　① Quoted from the finished script of the film The Sunny Days (Adapted from WANG Shuo's novel Ferocious Animals by JIANG Wen)

　　② A Dictionary of Modern Painting by Raymond, etc., published by People's Fine Arts Publishing House in 1991.

作者：Li Xu