A square painting appears before you - a naked body lies in the lower part of the painting, and violets surround her back against an idyllic Italian backdrop. Rose-tinted clouds melt seamlessly into the distant hills. The girl’s naked body blushes, corresponding to the rosy hues of the sky above. This is Yang Yang’s latest work, ‘Dawn in Sienna’ (2007).

　　One day in mid-March, I went to Yang Yang’s studio in one of Beijing’s northeast suburbs. I saw her latest works with the fragrance of fresh paint still in the air. Yang Yang explained to me in detail the ideas behind these new works. She also discussed how her painting style has changed over the years.

　　Yang Yang’s resume is rich enough to cause jealousy in any aspiring painter. In 1989, she graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts Preparatory High School. Based on the merit of her work she was not required to take an entrance exam and was admitted by the Painting Department in the Central Academy of Fine Arts - the best art academy in China. In the same year, the Ministry of Culture and Education awarded her a scholarship to study in the former Soviet Union .In 1995, she graduated from Moscow National Academy of Fine Arts named V. I. Surikov with a master’s in art.

　　Six years of artistic life in Russia served as an extension of her formal Chinese art education. People who have never been to Russia might not know that art museums in Moscow have a particularly strong collection of 20th century art masters. They might not know about the size of the works of the masterpieces at various museums around Russia - and that the size of the works grew out of Russia’s unique artistic styles and the nation’s rich cultural heritage. For Yang Yang - having studied in Russia - understanding these works comes easy. Naturally, her experience in Russia is the period during which her unique artistic sensibility was formed.

　　Yang Yang gained competence in both Chinese art academies and as an exchange student at Moscow National Academy of Fine Arts named V. I. Surikov. Her works demonstrate a deep understanding of the painting techniques and expressive styles of classical painting.

　　Today we can no longer find a trace of café-tinted classical hues in Yang Yang’s resplendent works. Without a comprehensive review of her works over the past few years, we could not imagine that the works all belong to the same painter.

　　There’s not only been a shift from café to rose-tinted hues - comparable perhaps in the chromatic shift from Rembrandt to the Impressionists - but there’s also been a shift in her work from interiors to exteriors and to an emphasis on natural scenery. The colors generated by photosynthesis are far more vibrant than the colors found in interiors.

　　Life and nature become the dominant themes in Yang Yang’s painting; so naturally, the images and elements in her work levitate toward the upward distances of blue skies and puffs of clouds - offering viewers the high-altitude perspective of angels, suggesting air and color flowing through the body.

　　Actually, after Yang Yang returned from Moscow, she didn’t paint for eight years because she was raising her son. During that period, she was working in printmaking. How did she return to painting?

　　For Yang Yang, creating prints is not a form of escape. She says, “I actually like printmaking - the discretion that creating prints requires parallels certain traits in my personality.” That is, discretion is an essential part of printmaking. Perceptive viewers might notice that many painters in Chinese contemporary art started as printmakers. The structural formation and the abstract pictorial elements in printmaking, especially its selection of a few expressive colors from among many colors, offer a form of training not found in painting. I also found such elements - printmaking elements - in Yang Yang’s latest works, such as in “Paradise fruit”, “Dawn in Sienna”, “Angle’s Path” and “Wind.”

　　Besides color and simple structural forms, Yang Yang’s painting also demonstrates a strong sense of space and emotional expressiveness. In traditional Chinese painting, especially in figurative painting from the modern era, a lot of blank space surrounds the subjects. This blank space gives the audience room for imagination. I don’t know whether Yang Yang was aware of this influence from traditional Chinese figurative painting. But the influence demonstrates an Eastern aesthetic consciousness. The difference in Yang Yang’s painting is that blank space is replaced by blue skies. Her paintings remind me of the empty spatial relationships found in the figurative paintings of Chen Laolian and Ren Weichang from the Qing Dynasty. Of course, it also recalls the interactive relationship between subject and space in Chinese drama.

　　Yang Yang’s paintings leave a large space for cloud puffs, lending mystery to the images. The audience only has to recall similar images in both Chinese and Western paintings in order to grasp the meaning generated by the co-existence of people and molecules of water.

　　Yang Yang says that she likes Rubens. It seems that few people would mention a classical painter like Rubens. But people familiar with the history of modern painting would know that Rubens influenced even Impressionist painters like Renoir. Ruben’s representations of the human body are filled with a Baroque excitement.

　　We fantasize about paradise, but no one has accurately depicted paradise. Yang Yang’s painting also aspires to depict paradise, but I feel that depicting paradise is a human dream - a case of unrequited love. What’s important is that the human consciousness expresses itself because paradise - after all - does not blush.

　　2007-04-13

　　English Translation by Stacey Duff

作者：Fang,Zhenning