在当代中国雕塑界，田世信是一位有独立个性的艺术家。他不像有些人那样追赶所谓“世界潮流”不断改变自己的风格，以迎合艺术市场的需要；他也不像另外一些人那样，忙着接受各种城市雕塑“订件”，做一些违背自己意愿的“作品”。他在北京郊区的工作室里默默的耕耘着，凭自己的生活积累和体验，用自己的智慧和技巧构思、创作，在原有风格的基础上做各种创新的尝试，每件作品都匠心独运，精心锤炼，别出新意，受到同行们的尊重和社会的好评。

　　田世信出生在北京一个有文化教养的的大家庭，从小就热爱艺术。他在北京艺术学院的附中和大学接受系统教育８年，除了牢固地掌握了学院传授的技巧外，他还受到主张艺术创新的老师卫天霖和吴冠中的影响，懂得艺术语言切忌一般化，要表达自己的个性。大学毕业后，他没有机会从事艺术创作，被分派到偏远的贵州生活工作了25年，其中在中学教书14年。在很长一段时间里，田世信只能偶尔拿起画笔画些速写，但他的所见所闻，周围的底层人民的生存状态，社会上的众生百态，还有那些充满生机的贵州民间艺术，给予他很多教育、启发和艺术灵感，也为他以后的艺术热情便不可抑制地爆发出来。上个世纪80年代，他的作品如《司马迁》、《谭嗣同》、《牧羊女》等在北京展出，他富有表现力的雕塑语言，备受美术界关注，田世信也被人们刮目相看。不久，他到中央美术学院雕塑创作室工作，从此进入了他创作生涯的旺盛期。

　　田世信有丰厚的生活根底，有广阔的艺术视野，并善于吸收和消化各种艺术资源，因此他的作品有充实的内容，有鲜明的个性风格。他把从民间艺术中吸收的养料提炼为具有现代感的语言，他把欧洲古典写实雕塑技巧和中国传统雕塑写意手法有机融合，他借鉴西方现代艺术语言的象征性、表现性和某些抽象性……一句话，他从自己真实的生活感受出发，根据每件作品的需要，自由的驰骋在艺术的大天地里。

　　田世信作品的体积有大有小，但在每件作品中他都追求大的思想容量。他理解的作品思想内涵不局限于题材内容，也包括形式意味。他认为，没有形式感的作品是空洞乏味的。因此，他特别注重雕塑的形式语言的感染力，为之反复推敲，大有“语不惊人死不休”的味道。在浑厚雄健的雕塑体积中，他追求质朴粗犷的力美，追求苦涩的美感，追求生命本质性的真实。他遵循形神兼备的原则，深入刻画人物的性格，突出作品鲜明的基调。《老子》、《齐白石》、《朋友》等，都是他近年来的杰作。《老子》其貌不扬，“老态龙钟”，但深谙宇宙变化之道、洞悉万物的智慧目光和吞吐天地的胸怀，给人以心灵震撼。白石老人的温和敦厚与儒雅的风度，刻画的自然生动。田世信在处理三人组雕《朋友》时，不仅成功地塑造了鲁迅、肖伯纳和蔡元培的形象，而且传神的刻画出他们亲切交谈时的神情，表达出真挚友情的魅力。

　　田世信塑造的许多山区的人物形象如《山风》、《归》、《牧羊人》、《山路系列》等，有的是单人雕塑，有的是组雕，人物形象不仅传神传情，而且似乎传达出他（她）们的话语声音，可谓“声情并茂”。他创作的许多古代人物如《唐女系列》、《竹林七贤系列》也有各自的独特风采。

　　作为雕塑家，田世信对材料有特殊的敏感。陶土、不同质材的石头和木料、大漆、青铜……他根据不同材料的特制酝酿和构思艺术形象，用“这一块”材料做“这一件”塑像。还有，由于他在绘画领域也颇有造诣，他对平面塑造和色彩有浓厚兴趣。他巧妙地把这些修养用于雕塑创作，例如他很注意用雕塑体积表面的光影和色彩效果，来加强雕塑语言的表现力；他在处理民俗题材时，往往采用民间雕塑手法，在一定的建筑空间里安排处于活动状态的人物，形成如情节性绘画的“雕塑画面”，赋予传统民间雕塑形式以现代神韵。

邵大箴，中央美术学院教授，中国美术家协会美术理论艺委会主任

此文章发表于《人民日报》海外版2006年11月7日

A Symphony of Power and Beauty: Tian Shixin's Sculptures

Shao Dazhen

　　In contemporary Chinese sculpture, Tian Shixin is an independently-minded artist. He isn't like some artists, who constantly change their style, chasing global trends to meet art market demand. He's also unlike another group of artists that is busy with urban sculpture commissions, making "artworks" that run counter to their own principles. In his studio on the outskirts of Beijing, he quietly cultivates his works, relying on his accumulated life experiences and his intelligence and techniques to conceptualize and create artworks. Based on his original stylistic foundation, he made various innovative experiments. Every work is ingenious, meticulously crafted, and inventive, meriting respect from his colleagues and praise from the public.

　　Tian Shixin was born to a large and cultured Beijing family, so he appreciated art from a young age. He studied at the Beijing College of Art and its affiliated high school for eight years. In addition to a firm grasp of the techniques taught by the school, he was influenced by Wei Tianlin and Wu Guanzhong, teachers who advocated for artistic innovation. He understood that artistic language must avoid generalization at all costs; it had to express the artist's personality. After graduating, he did not have the opportunity to make art, and he was assigned to live and work in distant Guizhou for 25 years. Fourteen of those years were spent teaching middle school. During this time, Tian could only occasionally make a few sketches, but everything that he saw and heard, including the life circumstances of ordinary people, the multiple facets of society, and vivid Guizhou folk art, provided him with abundant education, enlightenment, and artistic inspiration, allowing his later artistic passion to burst forth unrestrained. In the 1980s, his works, including Sima Qian, Tan Sitong, and Herder, were exhibited in Beijing. His richly expressive sculptural language caught the attention of the art world, and people had a new-found respect for him. Before long, he was working at the Sculpture Institute at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and began a prolific period in his artistic career.

　　Tian Shixin has a deep foundation in life and an extensive vision of art; he excels at absorbing and digesting various artistic resources, giving his works rich content and fresh, personal style. He refined the nourishment drawn from folk art into a modern language. He organically blended techniques from European classical realist sculpture and freehand methods from Chinese traditional sculpture. He learned from the symbolism, expressiveness, and abstraction of current Western artistic languages… In short, he began with his real, lived emotions, and he created freely based on the needs of each work.

　　Tian has made both large and small works, but he pursues big ideas in every piece. His understanding of the intellectual content of a work encompasses subject matter, as well as formal implications. He believes that works without form are empty and dull. Thus, he particularly emphasizes the influence of formal language, repeatedly weighing its importance. "If words do not startle, death itself is without rest." With the simple and powerful volumes of his sculpture, he pursues a modest, rough, and powerful beauty, a painful sense of beauty, and the truth that lies at the essence of life. He followed a blend of body and spirit, highlighting the depth of the figures' personality and the fresh undertones of the work. Lao Tzu, Qi Baishi, and Friends are excellent works from recent years. Lao Tzu is unprepossessing and almost "senile," but he deeply understands the changes of the universe; he has a wise expression that seems to understand all things, a mind that encompasses heaven and earth, and surprises the soul. Qi Baishi's moderate, honest, and refined bearing has a natural vitality. In the three-part sculpture group Friends, Tian Shixin successfully sculpted Lu Xun, George Bernard Shaw, and Cai Yuanpei, and he vividly depicted their expressions as they talked amicably amongst themselves, expressing the joy of close friendships.

　　Tian Shixin depicted many figures from the mountains, such as Mountain Breeze, Return, Herder, and Mountain Road. He made single figures and sculpture groups; the figures were vivid and expressive, conveying a voice. They "seemed to sing beautifully and feelingly." His many ancient figures, such as Tang Woman and The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, also have their own distinctive and graceful demeanors.

　　As a sculptor, Tian Shixin is particularly attuned to materials: clay, different kinds of stone and wood, lacquer, and bronze… He considers and composes his artistic forms based on the qualities of these materials, using this material to make this sculpture. In addition, because of his achievements in painting, he was deeply interested in planar modeling and color. He cleverly applied this training to sculpture; for example, he paid close attention to using the light, shadow, and color effects of the volumes and surfaces of sculptures to make his sculptural language more expressive. When he deals with folk subjects, he often uses the techniques of folk sculpture. In a specific architectural space, he arranges figures in motion to form "sculptural tableaus" that are akin to narrative painting, giving traditional folk sculpture a modern aura.

　　Shao Dazhen, professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and chair of the Art Theory Committee at the China Artists Association

　　This article was originally published in the overseas edition of the China Daily on November 7, 2006.

作者：邵大箴