Face to Face Impression

　　The first time I knew about Haiwang and his works is in the Tinbohof hotel besides the Potsdam Spree river. In the spacious bright hall of the hotel, there was an exhibition hold by the Jindu art company which is located in the 798 Art zone, Beijing, China. 30 Contemporary Art Paintings were exhibited, including three of Haiwang's works which are all about 2 or 3 meters high and 2 or 3 miters wide. Different from other paintings, the three works which are parts of the " The music of nature" painting series, look more realistically, and the artistic technique of the paintings show us some kind of expressionism obviously.  A few Germany friends and I stood before Haiwang's paintings and grazed attentively without any conversation. I believed that we were appreciating the paintings from different perspectives. When I watching those gloomy paintings, I couldn't help associate the fade leaves and frail branches of lotus with the financial crisis in 2008. Was Haiwang also gloomy ?

　　No ,I was wrong .He was wearing a bright smile himself .Every artist was well beloved ,especially Haiwang. Compared with his works, he looked so little that you could hardly believe those large pictures are painted by him, where lies the charm of his works.He wore a Chinese tunic suit that day ,which was as eye-catching as Professor Tan' T-shirts ,with a portrait of Guevara on it. Such apparel attracted plenty of Germans, who are interested in Chinese culture but know little about it. There was no doubt that some visitors especially those who had special understanding about Chinese art wanted to have a talk with Haiwang. Among them, two persons showed their intentions of buying Haiwang's works. The hotel manager( the main sponsor of that exhibition), a plump but elegant woman, even came direct to Haiwang and had a picture taken with him, followed by the rest one after another.

　　I had met him several times after we came back to Beijing. I found that he is optimistic and diligent, never surrender and have indomitable energy to erupt whenever faces adversities or even the desperate situation.  One day, he phoned me that he and his wife suffered a car accident , severely wounded and had been in hospital for a week. However, his voice sounds as cheery as before, I could hardly believe he just rallied from the coma. When I stood besides his sickbed and listened to him describing the accident, I couldn't believe that his left arm, ribs and left leg were all hit to broken by a huge lorry when he and his wife were driving on the high way. When he told his experience to me, he seemed to be telling other people's funny experience with shining eyes and a loud voice. Oh my god, seeing his calm square face, I associated the short man with Guan yunchang who had scraped the poison off the bone. However, I believe what he experienced was far more suffering than Mr.Guan!

　　However, half a year later, as soon as he could walk on crutches, he started his art creation. He flied from Beijing to Qinghai to look for inspirations from the Qinghai 2010 International Cycling Race. In November, the heavy snow covered the Tibetan plateau. But Haiwang tramped over mountains, cross deserts, hiked in the frozen world just for some wonderful pictures. After back to his studio in Yanjiao, he began painting nonstop. As his wife described, he painted day and night like a madmen, forgot eating and ignored the whole world around him. At last, he painted about 50 huge paintings taking the scenery of Qinghai as a theme in three or four months. When seeing Haiwang standing on his crutches and smiling before his works, I was deeply moved by such a "short" man. He was a man with an indomitable spirit ,so looking up to him is well deserved irrespective of the different attitudes about his works. Additionally, when we enjoyed Da Hong Pao (a type of Chinese tea) together, I can also see the warmth side of him.

Face to the paintings

　　Haiwang is a prolific artist. There are about 800 works preserved in his studio. It is impossible to analyze all the themes, the art techniques, the tones and the materials in a few words, but all the works I have seen left me various and impressive impressions.In 1991, two of his paintings, Guest from afar ， Mom and the Son, show his solid foundation. He presents a real, kind picture of life with great facility. What's more, those colors and lines also create an lingering and meaningful artistic conception. In Guest from afar , there isn't a host waiting for the guest but a dog sitting in the hallway of a farmhouse with its back to us. Following the dog's gaze, we can see an unshape black dot , which is probably the guest. Although I can't see the host, the expect of the guest is vividly portrayed. In Mom and the Son, the love between the naughty calf and the motherly cow is vividly exhibited by their postures, moving us deeply. Haiwang portrays the paintings like writing poems, and let us savor the scenes to understand the artistic conception he creates. It is no denying that Haiwang is the best mentor for those just begin their art creation. And of course, his Chinese traditional conception and expression will be admired and adored by those students.

　　From the works after 1995, I can see obviously that Haiwang began to deny his past creative concepts and artistic techniques. When seeing the works after 1995 such as "Heavenly Dream","Worldly Affinity", "Silence "and "The Bodies", what came into my eyes are those dim and contorted bodies, and disorderly and unsystematic colors and lines. However, the other two painting series, "Lotus in Winter" (2002)and "The Music of Nature"(2007), are not only unsystematic but also dark and obscure, leaving people a strong impression of depressing. During that period, lots of Haiwang's paintings such as "Shangri-La","Silhouette of the City","Untitled" or even "the cattle", are as depressed as those pictures. They seem to be painted inadvertently when the painter felt approximate madness, helpless or bored stiff.

　　From works with the scenery of Qinghai for the theme, which were painted during 2010 and 2011, we can see the daunting snow mountain, vast desert, the canyon, rolling hill roads, the yak and so on. What we can feel from the frames become specific again or may become more specific. Naturally, we will associate those vivid frames with the scenery of Qinghai you've ever seen personally or indirectly. However, we can still see obviously that the dim images, the exaggeration colors, and disorderly and unsystematic lines and the visual impact on the eyes.

　　If we set the creation from 1995 to 2009 as a stage, then those creation of Qinghai Scenery can be regarded as a new stage. Yet, if we read those works just from the perspective of aesthetic, we will be confused and hardly get the true meaning of Haiwang. So based on the Western Art History and the concept of creation and the artistic technique we studied since the Reform and Opening-up time in China, we can come to the conclusion that Haiwang is an expressionism painter.

Impression of the paintings

　　Expressionism firstly emerged as an art genre and a group artistic creation concept is in the 19s in Europe. Van Gogh from Netherland, Kelimute and Aigon - Hille from Austria, Franz - Marc and Kollwitz from Germany and so on are all considered to be the representatives of expressionism.Especially those artists from Germany,not only are full of practice in creation, but also theoretically explain the requirements, characteristics and meanings of expressionism.

　　In their opinions, the most important characteristic of expressionism is the paradoxical personality and complicated expression forms,which is reflected in the apparent contradiction between freedom and yoke, intuition and rational, dream and anarchism, individual and community,tradition and betrayal, and such opposite sides. They consider the artistic creation to be not only portraying the reality exactly and arranging the reality ideally, but also explaining the reality. They hold the idea that art should be the media between human and the reality. What's more, Franz-Marc believes that the responsibility of the artist is to reveal the things which are free from vulgar and can be found in the worldly matters.

　　In other words, art is to sublimate the objective things and transform them into abstract concept to symbolize the emotion and behaviour of humans. As a result, artists will not focus their concentration on the content, the motivation and the external art form of the works, but focus on the connotation of the art works. Or to elicit a famous saying,"Art don't show the visible things but make the invisible things seen."

　　After knowing the definition, requirement and the characteristics of expressionism, it will be much easier to understand Haiwang's works created in later two stages. The groups of paintings, for example, Heavenly Dream, Worldly Affinity, Silence and The Bodies, can be generally understood as the process of life( including pregnancy, growing, maturation and then declining) and human instinct (especially sexual instinct). By using some messy, irregular, split and obscure colors and bodies, Haiwang presents some unusual or invisible spirits which are implicit in the bodies. Undeniably, there also exist some mental things as ugly as the wild beasts. Those spirits are real existences in life, humanity and emotion, which are always ignored and avoided but should not be abandoned. Certainly, in each independent work, what the artist want to express are not only limited to the above generalizations, and what we can get through the bridge built by the painters' artistic skills are not same or even radically different.

　　Because the painter doesn't mean to create the artistic conception by copy the reality but to show us a mirror which can present the implicit side of things.

　　Also, the painting series, The Lotus, should not be understood by the aesthetic standard. Actually, the unappreciated fade leaves and frail branches of lotus in winter are reminding us the inevitable natural process of life which may always be ignored. No withered time, no blossom. The blue screen nourishes hope and happiness. Interestingly, Haiwang always seriously portrays such normal and neglected pictures in lots of canvases to imply happiness. So it can be sure that Haiwaing has never abandoned the traditional  Chinese Culture.

　　In the painting series,Scenery of Qinghai, we can see the yak, the snow peaks, the mountain roads, the village at the foot of the mountain, the vast desert and the withered grasses. The most impressive painting is the one with a beautiful Tibetan girl riding a blood red yak. Those images give me a feeling of frostily exaggeration or an neglected of the viewer. The vision of the snow peaks impose a strong feeling of freezing to the viewer, not to mention the difficulty of climbing. From the pictures, we just can  see groups of furs and horns but we can surely feel the vivid and indomitable vitality of the yaks yet without seeing their faces, eyes or the expressions . Life is precious and indomitable and has nothing to fear: these are the themes that Haiwang deliberately emphasize again and again and even weaken some charming materials which may distract our attention. Once, an art critics who knew well about Haiwang's thrilling experience of death, said,"the trip to Qingdao and the creation of those pictures are the same as phoenix's nirvana. Yes! Totally agree! He induced me to eulogize the strength and optimism of life. But we have to admit this painting series is different from those before the car accident. He is not only a Expressionist but also a man create the artistic conception. Or in other words,basing on the artistic conception creation, Haiwang skillfully blends the expressionism in the paintings. After all, The Tibetan Plateau as a background and a source of art creation has its special and notable features. However, when create or understand the art, the source and the background are not just coincidence, and they are all attributed to Haiwang's wisdom and design.

　　Touchingly, as soon as Haiwang recovered from the car accident and could walk on crutches, he came to Qinghai to paint avidly and got all the paintings done in one vigorous effort. It precisely means that Haiwang regained the power and ardour to express the talent and inspiration after experiencing the anguish both physically and mentally. He holds the idea that the responsibility of artist is to translate the beauty he discovered to others. Through combining the East and West techniques like building artistic conception and utilizing expressionism ,Haiwang successfully paint the visual things to reveal the implicit things.

　　The painting series of Qinghai is really a new height of Haiwang in the new stage of artistic creation. And I am looking forward to his further progress eagerly!