Modern Expression of Classic Oriental Charm——  An Analysis of Tong Zhengang’s Paintings

Wang Luxiang

The major subject matter of Tong Zhengang’s paintings is modern women. According to existing authentic works starting from Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin dynasty, Chinese painters has been depicting women for more than a thousand years. The sensitiveness and interest of Chinese male in the female figure has even formed a kind of gender culture. However, China has been a country under the ‘rule’ of Confucianism with strict observation of rites. Under such cultural circumstances, it was hard for paintings with female subject matter to enter the main stream of the painting tradition. It seems that only unconventional and uninhibited painters would occasionally depict women. Compared with paintings of landscape, flower-and-bird and figures of Taoism and Buddhism, those of women are relatively fewer. Especially after the Tang and Five Dynasties, when rites became more and more influential, the number of paintings of women declined. Taking a broad vies, in the hundreds of years of painting history, it appears that only Tang Bohu used his brush to express the feeling of men towards women. The beauty of females has not been treated as important subject matter and painters were not willing to devote much attention and effort to it.

This situation changed greatly after the establishment of the Republic of China when traditional rites were no longer observed. Many great masters, such as Zhang Daqian, Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian, Fu Baoshi and Li Keran were eager to paint women figures. The women depicted by Zhang, Xu, Fu and Li still contain an archaic flavor: it seems that most of them ate too frail to bear the weight of their clothing. When painting women, Lin adopted the technique of Western painting and the line from paintings on porcelain to from a fresh style, creating a new prospect for women figure painting.

It is natural and normal for people to appreciate the beauty of women. Compared with pornographic pictures, female figure paintings reflect an appreciation of beauty-a fondness of women which is not excessive. Although in the early period of the People’s Republic of China, this subject matter disappeared for thirty years, with the loosening of the cultural environment and more open attitudes, some young painters have broken through the restricted area to regain the sensitiveness towards the beauty of women and bravely painted female figures. Among these painters, Tong Zhengang’s painting contains the most artistic consciousness and outstanding artistic taste.

His sensitiveness towards women surpasses that of the ordinary person. By contrast with Ding Shaoguang, women in Tong’s paintings embody body fragrance and warmness. Compared to Zhu Xinjian’s paintings, the women in Tong’s paintings always maintain a certain distance from us. In his paintings, beautiful ladies are always sitting or standing naturally, without any dissipated poses or enticing expressions. Certainly, they are not stiff but relaxed, calm and peaceful. This particular calmness does not allow viewers to be disrespectful, yet their hairstyles, eyes, bodies and clothing are all moving and enchanting.

I believe Tong Zhengang’s special angle on viewing and appreciating women is most suitable for expressing women’s innermost feelings. It is in the boudoir-women’s private space. Within this special space, they can disregard the taboos of society and show off their feminine charms: it is purely a space for women. The purity of the space enables the utmost release of the beauty of women. In this space, those satisfied, comfortable and self-aware female beauties are not deified, but also not debased. They are women who exist, pure and true, insulated from the human world.

The focal point for Tong Zhengang is expressionless faces of the women, which is different from the facial expressions of cat-walk models. The latter pretend to be without passion. Whereas the expressionless faces of women in Tong’s paintings is consistent with the purity of the boudoir. Their expression is strange to us since the female expressions we come across in daily life are no longer pure. It seems that literary works have yet to catch this particular facial expression. Because of its purity, this facial expression possesses metaphysical profoundness and simplicity.

What I also admire about Tong Zhengang is his perfection of the sense of distance.

To keep a suitable distance from the beautiful ladies is not on account of considerations of morality but the need to appreciate their beauty. Distance produces beauty. Distance enables the enjoyment of possessive and consumption to be transformed to the taste of quiet viewing and appreciation of beauty. Distance gives way to reverie. Distance creates a hazy poetic atmosphere. Tong Zhengang sets beautiful ladies in front of us and at the same time makes them stand apart. He is an expert in creating a space for appreciation and he knows that space creation itself is an art of creation. You can see that he sometimes allows them to stand behind large blue and white porcelain vases, or hides them in a dim background. He employs the method of drawing outlines from the back to ensure that the skin and facial features appear indistinctly. He uses thick and dense colors to depict gorgeous vases and also uses special materials to create gold relief lotuses. Further, he pays special attention to designing ladies’ clothing with bouquets of flowers. However, he uses few colors and ink to depict the bodies and faces of ladies. He makes their physical features recede and relatively indistinct to create a mood of suggestive of their bodily fragrance. His purpose in creating distance is to make sure the beauty will not be polluted and blasphemed by carnal desire.

Tong Zhengang’s women paintings adopt a relatively traditional screen-like structure to pursue a flat decorative style and strive for a simplicity of color and ink, but with unlimited complexity of textural effects. He depends on the different thicknesses and rough texture to construct the variation of gradations. Lotuses are the thickest and roughest and the artist uses special materials to pile and mold on paper, then spray on gold powder. The vases are drawn and splashed with dyeing colors in order to recreate the lively outcome of the blending of the underglazed blue and white pattern under high temperature. Hair, chair and window lattices are painted with dry and dark ink to produce a feeling of protruding forward. Light ink on the back of the paper is adopted to depict the limbs and facial features, making use of the diffusion of ink and water to enhance the softness. Ink and color are randomly employed to show the unlimited layers from the darkness. Usually, bodies are lightly washed with pink color, but recently, the bodies are kept blank and no colors are added to form an unoccupied space. Owing to the different effects of the variations in thickness and texture produced by the changes of materials and techniques, a screen-like frame can be divided into four to five entirely different layers. Apart from different feeling of light and color, they also give rise to different sense of touch and warmth, which enriches the joyfulness of the viewers. These layers are not showing the depth of perspective. However, how to maintain the visual striking and unrestraint of composition in the process of constructing space in a flat way, and to a great extent, to show the abundance of connotation in the space is a measurement of talent of an artist. In recent years, Tong Zhengang’s artistic pursuit has been ‘locked on’ this tough question. On the flat surface, he uses many materials and different techniques to break through the monotone of flatness. Tong Zhengang is creating a new language and method, both of which are becoming increasingly mature. It has been said that in the eighties, Chinese painting was concerned with innovation of concepts, whereas it was innovation of language in the nineties. In the trend of innovation of language, Tong Zhengang has been in the forefront among ink painters.

It is an interesting and seemingly contradicting phenomenon that when Tong Zhengang confidently applies different materials to break through the limit of the representation of ink, he never gives up the traditional use of the brush tip and bone-method brushwork. It is not because he wants to retain the name, ‘ Chinese Painting ‘, but through long practice of painting and writing, he deeply understands the certain support of ‘ bone line ‘ in the multi-layer texturally flat composition, the feeling of strength of the paintings would be greatly weakened. Such rigid support makes his women paintings mannerly different from traditional ones and of course different from those of painters in Japan and Taiwan. Thus, a delicate subject matter is surpassed by his bold brushwork, which is natural, unrestrained and monumental. The line of Tong Zhengang belongs to fair round type (there is rigidity among softness ), which has the greatest esteem in traditional calligraphic aesthetics. This kind of line resembles cramp iron containing implicit strength and rich in elasticity, which reduces the female weakness. If his line does not contain such inner tension, how could it support such heavy texture? How could it express such a delicate subject matter with such brightness?

Furthermore, Tong Zhengang skillfully applies the abstract line of calligraphy and composition to a flat design to become special decorative and cultural symbols, similar to those of ceramic vases and gold lotuses. Here, the artist does not emphasize on the meaning of calligraphy and its relationship to the content and artistic conception. Calligraphy is only written to echo with the ‘bone lines ‘ in the painting in order to create some sparse frame and checks among dense texture to keep the balance of the constructive elements of emptiness and substance. Therefore, whether the writing can be identified is not important. Thus, he sometimes writes on the back of the paintings and reconstructs the characters to create signs. However, overtaking the composition his solid calligraphic achievement and unrestrained brushwork still bring us the calligraphic reverie embodying a special mood. They form an atmosphere together with the cultural signs of a ceramic vase and gold lotuses to surround and envelop those typical Oriental females and unexpectedly create classic Oriental charm. Beauty, not only stems from nature, but also comes from cultural decoration and influence.

To analyze Tong Zhengang is one thing and to evaluate Tong Zhengang is another. This is because evaluation needs reference, but Tong Zhengang is a special case in China with the result that it is hard to put him in a certain group or school. Interestingly, he was originally a member of the ‘New Literati Painters.’ For a few years at that time, he certainly painted ancient figures combined with calligraphy (to date, some people still like his pleasing fans with this subject matter) and some compositional elements in his recent paintings already appeared at that time.

However, he quickly departed from this loose school and entered the much more striking vanguard group, ‘The Experiment of Tensional Expression of Ink’, which, to date, still has no clear and fixed direction. By contrast with the implicit style of ‘New Literati Painting’, ‘The Experiment of Tensional Expression of Ink’ emphasizes the extension of tension, which tries to innovate the vitality and intensity of ink expression to replenish the inherent fraility of ink quality caused by both materials and culture. It should be said that, this artistic pursuit is closer to Tong Zhengang’s individual exploration. Therefore, he has taken part for several years in exhibitions of ‘The Experiment of Tensional Expression of Ink’ and has become one of its key figures. However, to me, Tong Zhengang appears unusual among these two groups of artists. Compared to ‘New Literati Painting’, which excessively emphasizes returning to the softness of ink, his painting shows an unrestrained life impulse and boldness of vision. Compared to the majority of painters of ‘The Experiment of Tensional Expression of Ink’, his painting retains classic beauty and elegant taste.

I believe, at least at present, Tong Zhengang is a painter whom it is hard to categorize. He is what he is. His style and from are of a special kind, which looks both traditional and modern. However, his painting wonderfully pursues both tradition and experimentation; it not only defends tenaciously but also bravely breaks through. He also cleverly arranges the relation of subject matter and language. On language, he has conducted many explorations and experiments, whereas on subject matter, he would rather cater for the most ordinary viewers. He does not put energy and wisdom on ‘what to paint’, but spends all his efforts to solve the problem of ‘how to paint’. He thinks that this is the substance of painting. The modern expression of ancient subject matter-this is what he wants to do. His modern women figure painting reaches a height in contemporary expression of Oriental female beauty. If you ask me to choose two female figure painters in the twentieth century, the first one I would vote for is Lin Fengmian, while my other vote would be for Tong Zhengang.