The Wonderful Combination of Civilian Aesthetics and Elite Creation

              ——Lixiangming’s art works

                                       Shao Dazhen

Lixiangming is a man who has always been seeking art mystery continuously, and whom I have known for nearly 20 years. Every time we talked with each other, I found he always had a lot of new realization and new confusion. The realization roughly was the feeling and experience after reading China and foreign masters and the confusion generally was some worries aroused by the unhealthy way and customs and prevalent painting style in today’s art circles. He often want to explore these corrupt practice but couldn’t find answer. However, he is a man of action never stop art practice. He hold solo exhibition and took part in some important exhibitions such as Beijing international biennial. His early oil paintings not only showed the good modeling skill but also revealed a vivid quality with spirit and desire to change. Although had received strict training in realistic painting skills, he dissatisfied with the current popular monotonous face and he more felt the suppression that can't be free to express thought and emotion. ”Change” has almost been his pet phrase these years, and “how to change” has also been his meditation. However, not only he had been drawing and thinking simultaneously, but also he went to the familiar villages to find answer in the labourer and explore new creative resource.

In LiXiangMing‘s nature, there interlaced a peaceful temperament from civilian and a struggle up spirit. The peaceful temperament means that he knows the live state of the ordinary whom he sympathize with and respect to. He deems himself as one of them and doesn’t hold his head high as “somebody” as some artists do. He treats art creation and fame with a usual and calm manner, only expresses some doubt about some things he don’t like, that’s all. The struggle up spirit means his insistence to elite art. He lives in a rich elite art world, enjoying the sense of beauty and profound philosophy enlightened by the traditional classics art and the western modern art. There is no any external forces can intervene his free space of thinking and creating. This attitude determined his artistic temperament: one, sticking to the aesthetic taste of simple, plain and clumsy, which is closely related to the nature of life; two, chasing the modern art creation full with exploring spirit which is a task assumed by the contemporary philosophy and aesthetics. The two aspects have natural contact. Modern artistic theory and practice have already demonstrated repeatedly such a truth: the art impulse from life origin and the artistic creation from the subconscious, like the “art” of the primitive man, the unenlightened nationality, children, the labourer not received any training and madmen etc. are the available resources in the form change of the modern artistic. Such as African sculpture to Picasso’s Cubist and Matisse’s Fauvism，Children’s art to Paul Clifford and Miro’s creation etc.. Of course, if want to use the resources effectively, we need be good at finding that rests on the artist’s insight and vision and need exert creatively that lies on artist's talent and accomplishment. Lixiangming have a good habit that he always pays attention to the cause and effect of art innovation trend and school, and explores the principles new or different. Chinese traditional art and folk art , the different schools in the western modern art such as expressionism, symbolism, surrealism, abstractionism, and so on, are all the objects he repeatedly studied and used as the consulted objects for his creation. For the rich reserves and savings, his vision and feeling became naturally more acute. At this time, the breakthrough of innovation which he had been seeking for years appeared naturally in front of him  

  Seems to be accidental, he found the aesthetics in these familiar "patches" at his home city Hebei rural. The aesthetics of patches on those clothes, beddings, bags, all sorts of adornment fabric (such as curtain, block cloth etc.) is dimensional, component, textural, colorful, which is a handmade art and culture did by labor women who poured into their painstaking care for the need of life. Although contained subconscious factors, this kind of artistic creation inevitably recorded their mood seeking entertainment in bitter life and also showed their aesthetic consciousness lasted for generations. These patched objects themselves have the nature of art work, but to "find" them need to have "artistic eyes".

In 2005, LiXiangMing gathered a lot of fabrics with patches from Hebei rural. After being cleaned, these objects were used as art materials in his works and become resources of his painting creation. In 2008, he created a group of paintings titled "civilian aesthetics", the main images in the pictures are the old fabrics he collected from rural. As the name suggests, what he thought of above all was the once owners of these fabrics- the toiling masses, and they caused the thought about "living, culture, history, and politic, life”.In 2009, he filled hundreds of pockets as a installation and sent to an art exhibition. This was a very bold attempt, but he didn’t seem to keep on going to the direction, since he still madly cling to painting and tend to painting with the nature of installation rather than purely installation art. I thought the reason was that in his deep heart there was a complex of aestheticism. He was trained and influenced deeply by the traditional art of china and foreign countries whose basic elements are point, line and plane, color, space, compose etc. and then he have the feeling and ability on compose and color which general artists can’t reach. The motive he did installation art was being moved by beauty, while the form aesthetic sense was just avoided and rejected by the modern installation art. When Li’s thought turned to the expression based on the pursuit of painting, in front of him there showed a vast space to let him engage his art talent.

    If we need extract several vocabulary from the titles of Li’s work in recent years as "the key word" to summarize his artistic pursuit, they are "mountain village", "the field", "homeland", "the original form", "patch", "the dream" and "sing at dusk" etc.. By virtue of the artistic sensitivity and accomplishment, he created many pictures with both rich aesthetic feeling and philosophical meaning through the various combining of the material objects(the old fabric with culture memory) and painting elements. Whether be colorful or plain, they all have modern constructive significance and also have strong abstractness. They remind us some creations of the western modern painters, such as Malevich, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Paul･Clifford, and Miro etc.. Undoubtedly, Li illuminated by the works. But his creation differs from the western modernism master, that is he based on Chinese context and cultural resources in which he found the particular creational elements, and he also absorbed nutrition from the image said of Chinese art. His abstract differ from the western abstract. In the combined style of the point, line, plane and color, he played the line’s charm of Chinese traditional calligraphy and even used the composition of the traditional landscape painting for reference in his many works. As for the "civilian aesthetics" concept Li based on and the behavior that Li used the patches on those old fabrics as art materials are really rare in the modern history.

We can say, his art is a wonderful combine of civilian aesthetics and elite art.