Before the introduction of the Western painting in the 20th century, ink painting was the mainstream of traditional Chinese painting and formed a complete value system of literati painting. With its systematic education in the 20th century, the Western painting has gradually established itself as a mainstream in parallel with the Chinese ink painting. The dual pattern continues though there are two different voices of nationalization and Westernization in the painting concept as well as the solution of “integration of the Chinese and Western painting” proposed by Lin Fengmian. Although with the rise of Chinese contemporary art since the 1980s the two types of painting have learned from each other in artistic techniques, they are still inside two completely different evaluation systems. The incompatibility in evaluation systems results in the fact that the contemporary practice of Chinese ink painting or its modernization cannot be fully explored. The ink painting practice by the artist Jiri Straka may be able to provide us with a new blueprint for the modernization of Chinese ink painting.

　　Jiri Straka, a Czech artist living in Beijing, mainly focuses on ink painting. He had a strong interest in China since he was a pupil in the nine-year primary school of the Czech Republic. At that time even the Chinese characters printed on the Chinese food packaging were intriguing to him. Jiri started his four-year study of print painting in an art school in Prague in 1984. During that period, he developed a strong interest in traditional Chinese ink painting through the catalogues of Chinese ink painters such as Huang Binhong, Qi Baishi and Li Keran published in the Czech Republic in the 1960s and by observing the ancient Chinese paintings.

　　Oldrich Kral, a well-known sinologist in the Czech Republic had a great influence on Jiri in his understanding of Chinese culture. Oldrich Kral, once the chief of the Chinese Department in the Charles University and a professor of ancient Chinese literature, translated Liu Zu Tanjing (a famous book on Chinese Zen) into Czech. He was also one of the initiators of the establishment of the Asian Branch of the Czech National Gallery. Influenced by Oldrich Kral, Jiri was later enrolled into the Institute of East Asian Studies in the Charles University in Prague to study sinology. In that period, he wrote articles on the Seven Sages of Bamboo Grove in the Northern and Southern Dynasties and thoughts on landscape paintings proposed by Zong Bing, Wang Wei and others. Through his reading, he also became interested in ancient Chinese metaphysics and Buddhism. This interest resulted in his Shoujie in Longhua Temple (a Zen monastery) in Guiping of Guangxi Province in 1999 and his recent conversion to Tibetan Buddhism. He hopes that the belief in Buddhism can guide him to self-perfection.

　　Jiri enrolled in the Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts and studied traditional Chinese ink painting for two years in the mid-1990s in order to achieve his painting ideals, and also due to his interest in China. He had been an ancient Chinese painting restoration expert and endulged in oriental art research in the Czech National Gallery from 2001 to 2005. His restoration work ranges from the ancient paintings in Ming and Qing Dynasty to the works of modern painters such as Lin Fengmian and Qi Baishi and shows his expertise in traditional Chinese ink painting. His familiarity with the strokes of traditional Chinese ink painting enables him to make innovative breakthroughs in the value system of traditional Chinese ink painting.

　　Jiri’s ink works of increasing maturity draws upon the way of traditional ink painting. He does not adopt the mainstream impressionistic style of domestic ink painting. He often kneels down on paper to paint in front of the real landscapes, flowers and plants. The paper size is usually large and he often dries the painting with a hair dryer while painting.This painting method has its root deep in the Western painting tradition. His works show both the features of Chinese ink painting and the sense of space and vividness in traditional Western paintings. The “Heart” series created after 2006 mark the establishment of his personal painting style. Jiri enlarges a pig heart in his painting on rice paper to 2-3 meters wide to match the concept of the “heart” in Buddhism and traditional Chinese culture. In Chinese culture, the “heart” means soul and it also bears perception capabilities. The match he shows in the painting is quite unexpected but also full of wisdom and humor, with a strong visual impact. Jiri later enlarges made-ready-for-cooking chickens and sheep, dead mosquitoes, dead birds run over by a car on the road, etc. to the size of several meters, making these daily occuring deaths very shocking. Even many of frequently seen things in our life, such as flies, goldfish, feathers of birds, ice-cream sticks, clothes hung to dry, homeless dogs and hotpot are amplified by Jiri to an alarming size as an important theme of his paintings. These paintings may prove his belief in Buddhism and the idea of equality of all living beings in the world. It’s impossible to depict the world in which we live without possessing extraordinary sensitivity to ink painting and details of life and without thinking about the meaning of life.

　　Yirui’s onsite ink painting is his further development to the Chinese ink painting. In ancient China, the literati often held meetings to learn the art of painting and calligraphy from each other. Due to the sensitivity of the ink on white paper, sometimes the brush-using speed is crucial to ink control, thus the painting process, either success or failure, is featured with performance. However, Yirui’s onsite ink painting isn’t a show but an integral part of his live painting and an essential step in his creation. Therefore, he just turns the necessary process itself of his onsite creation into a piece of artwork instead of showing off skills. It’s quite a viewing experience to watch Yirui standing on large-sized paper and waving the brush until his whole secret of painting is shown. Through Yirui’s works, we find that ink painting is no longer a game sticking to the minutiae of ink and brush but an art that can cross different art genres and the limit of different regional cultures and thus radiates vitality. From Yirui’s ink painting-related painting practice, we can feel there are lots of possibilities regarding the ink painting creativity in the future.

　　Jiri’s first onsite ink painting works are the “Heart” exhibited in the exhibition “Painting Rebellion” curated by myself in the “Inter Art Center” in Beijing 798 Art District in 2007. Jiri painted onsite in the exhibition site an enlarged pig heart, giving audience an experience of concrete life with a heart of an animal. In the exhibition “Painting Rebellion 2” held in Beijing in 2008, Jiri painted onsite the “Ship”, enabling people to associate the function of the ship with the concept of “transition” in Buddhism. “Transition” is the process of reaching the goal of perfection. One can “transit oneself” through one’s own practice, or can “help other people to transit” through the dissemination of Buddhism or granting them practical help. Jiri presented to the audience painting process, just like he shared with the audience the “self-transit” and “transit others” in the painting. In the activity of “Wanshousi Site” organised by me in the Wanshousi Buddhist Meeting of Changchun during the same year, Jiri painted onsite the “Flower”. In Buddhist stories, the Buddha “picks up a flower and smiles” and this marks the origin of Zen. Besides its religious significance, the “Flower” also has a strong secular meaning. In different cultures, “flower” is an indispensable and universal symbol of life. No matter how complicated the cultural interpretation of the “flower” is, it won’t cause much difficulties in interpretation of Jiri’s onsite painting process. This is because the process of his onsite painting of the huge lily is very simple and clear enough to make us overlook the concept interpretation and make us focus on the specific process of the creation of a piece of artwork. Jiri and his lily emancipates us from many troubles of the mundane world and put us into a silent “contemplation” of art in a rite-ridden meeting. At the opening ceremony of “Chinese Images • City Banner: Xi’an Qujiang International Contemporary Art Festival ” held in Xi’an in August 2009, Jiri again created some ink paintings with plant foliage and feathers as materials. His onsite ink paintings focussing on Zen turn the indispensable process of creation into a scene of ceremony. Jiri presented the audience artwork of an artist and also wonders of creation when he drove brush and ink onsite.

　　Jiri’s painting reflects the integration of perception and action, just like his attire and faith. He wears traditional Chinese costumes all year round and looks more traditional Chinese than the Chinese people themselves, and therefore he is often watched as a special kind of lanscape in China. Every time when I see Jiri dressed in the traditional Chinese, I compare him with Giuseppe Castiglione, the court painter in the Qing Dynasty. Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian missionary, came to China in 1715. He was summoned by the Qing emperor Kangxi. Although Emperor Kangxi did not favour his faith, he still appreciated his painting skills and employed him as a court painter. He lived in China for fifty years until his death in 1766 and lived through three eras of Emperor Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. Castiglione integrated the European way of realistic painting into traditional Chinese painting and changed the original way of traditional Chinese ink painting. After many years study of traditional Chinese ink painting, Jiri also gradually leans to the Western style of realistic painting. Giuseppe Castiglione and Jiri are both Europeans. They both use traditional Chinese painting tools and apply the European way of painting in creation of traditional Chinese painting, though their lifetimes are over two hundred years apart from each other. As a matter of fact, local Chinese painters have also been working on linking traditional Chinese ink painting with the Western way of realistic painting for almost one hundred years - with Jiang Zhaohe’s “Homeless People” as the most outstanding example. From Jiri’s works, we seem to perceive the process of Chinese ink painting evolution, starting from Castiglione and Jiang Zhaohe up to now. Just like Jiang Zhaohe who was concerned with the reality and the livelihood of people of his period, Jiri also infuses his experience and concern of life in his ink paintings and distances himself of the vulgarized Chinese ink painting.

　　Because Jiri uses materials of traditional Chinese ink painting, his work is worth of discussion within the framework of development of Chinese culture. I would say that the ink painting by Jiri is the most convincing example I have ever seen in showing the modernization of Chinese ink painting. Li Xiaoshan published an article of “My Thoughts on Contemporary Chinese Painting” in 1985 when he studied Chinese painting in the Nanjing Arts Academy as a graduate, claiming that Chinese painting has come to a dead end and can only exist as preserved painting. His remarks aroused hot discussions on the survival of Chinese ink painting among the Chinese art circle. Therefore I named that year “the first year of contemporary Chinese ink painting”. Now when more than two decades passed, Chinese ink painting has changed a lot, but there are few exemplary works of contemporary ink painting. Jiri’s creation method gives us a revelation - if setting aside the national obsession with ink painting and regarding it more simply as a kind of art tools and material, we may be able to develop more innovative ink painting works. It can be said that Jiri’s practice of ink painting has indicated a new dimension of development of traditional Chinese ink painting.

　　If Giuseppe Castiglione’s arrival to China two hundred years ago can be regarded as a pre-history of cultural globalization, then we can say that Jiri provides us with an unusual period of contemporary globalization today. Hundred years of modern Chinese history is filled with rising of Western learning in China. China’s modernization has been taking place at the expense of gradually losing its own tradition without development of a new culture with universal values as seen from the perspective of culture. Contemporary ink paintings made by Jiri seem to imply that the culture globalization is not necessarily unidirectional. We can review and reform the traditional Chinese culture, thus creating a new culture with universal values. It could be an effective way. It shows the unusual cultural significance of Jiri’s ink paintings. If Jiri’s art possesses values of impact on culture, then the resulting double and even multiglobalization will make the world more diversified and bring new creative power to the world culture in the future. It is also an inevitable way how to acquire universal values for non-industrial cultures, such as traditional Chinese culture.

Shu Yang

Revised in Nanping of Chongqing on December 20,2010.

作者：Shu,Yang