何百明是一位低调而又勤奋的画家，几十年来潜心于笔墨、色彩、形象的探索，其艺术风格一以贯之而又丰富多变。一以贯之的是它的内涵，清新明丽、雅俗共赏，具有很强的亲和力；丰富多变的是它的表现形式，时而淡冶疏朗，时而绚烂深邃，不断地给人以新意。

    百明早年师从海上花鸟名家邓怀农先生。邓先生以水墨擅长，尤以墨菊驰誉于世，笔墨苍劲遒迈，别有一种“不入时人眼”的高华。在邓先生的指授下，他遍读了八大、石涛、任颐、虚谷的精髓，锻炼了坚实的笔墨功底。但由于其儒雅亲和的性格，他更倾心的，并不是粗头乱服，而是潇洒优雅。所以，不久之后便转向色彩的兼工带写。

    大约在十年之前，他画花鸟，也画山水，笔墨是明润的、抒情的，体认了一种翩翩的灵性和才华；色彩是淡雅的，明洁的，使形象就像蕴涵在露气中一样有润泽的晶莹之感；形象则介于似于不似之间，而更倾向于似的一面；尤其在章法经营方面，更见其独到的才情和匠心。以花鸟而言，虽然画的多为折枝花鸟，而不太强调空间的进深，但与传统的折枝花鸟不同，他所强调的不是对真实对象主次、轻重、疏密的选择和剪裁，而是将形象、笔墨、色彩的主次、轻重、疏密的关系，从构成的角度加以组织。据他自已所言，这一意匠，与他从事建筑环境装饰视觉艺术有关，因为这一段经历的启迪，他对整体视觉审美的冲击意识获得更为深切、也更具现代特点的领悟。反映到画面上，鸟与鸟、鸟与花、花的枝与叶、主干与次枝；笔墨的粗与细、长与短、枯与湿、浓与淡，色彩的白与黑、红与绿、黄与灰、等等，似乎都成了他手中“构成”设计的元素，被运用到“绘画”的创作中来。如润泽春雨般的“杏花春雨江南”的婉约、优美意境，与师门干裂秋风般的“枯藤老树昏雅”的苍劲、雄强，已是门户有别，藩篱大撤了。

    百明君的这一创意，在当时获得了广泛的好评，沿着这一优美的路数，驾轻就熟，他完全可以不断地收获更丰硕的成果。然而，不懈的探索精神使他并不满足于此。因为，尽管这一创意在各方面，尤其是章法的经营方面，赋予了传统更鲜活的生命力，但它依然还是平面的，深不进去。所以，在既有成就的基础上，进入新世纪，他的艺术又进入了一个新的天地。在这一时期，他把探索的重点从形式的构成转移到题材内容的方面，作为重点中的重点，则选择了荷花、竹子和花鸟与山水的结合。与此同时，为了变平面感为进深感，在具体的画法方面，他又作出了两大突破。一是加强了勾勒填染的运用，并常常将双勾与点垛融于一局之中，双勾的叶与点垛的叶，前后叠合在一起，使层次感和进深感获得加强的展现；二是加强了重彩的运用，将浓墨与淡墨、重彩与淡彩融于一局，浓厚的石青、石绿、石黄或朱砂色，覆盖在浓墨点垛出来的叶片上，更使整个画面焕发出一种缤纷绚烂、富丽堂皇的视觉效果。这样的处理，显然是汲取了装饰画的优点，但它的结果，却并不是变中国画为装饰画，而是更丰富了中国画的进深感和色彩效果。

    以他用心最深的荷花、竹子和花鸟与山水结合的三类题材而言，他的荷花，双勾的、点垛的，墨色浓重的、墨色淡冶的，双勾之后填染颜色的、双勾之后留白不染的，构成性的线条、色彩，写实性的线条、色彩、多种多样的表现方法，和谐地杂陈于一局，不再是清淡的小菜一碟，而是膏腴的满汉全席。他的竹子，其创意不只在于竹竿、竹枝、竹叶的勾和点，是和色的骈丽协奏，更在于他对粗壮的竹根的表现，从而使得即使是折枝的竹，但它也不是长在二维的平面上，而是扎根在三维空间的大地上。他的花鸟结合山水，多描写山野的一角，各种各样的树木、花草、茂密地铺满整个画面，丛蔚深秀，交响着浓郁的野趣和蓬勃的生命力。如果说，十年前的百明画品，表现为“杏花春雨江南”般的清雅淡宕，那么，他今天的画品，更表现为“接天莲叶无穷碧，映日荷花别样红”般的华滋浓酣。

    寻绎百明君的艺术历程，很自然地使人联想到王安石在《游褒禅山记》中的一段话：“古人之观于天地、山川、草木、虫鱼、鸟兽，往往有得，以求其思之深而无不在也。夫夷以近，则游者众，险以远，则至者少。而世之奇伟瑰怪，非常之观，常在于险远，而人之所罕至焉。”显然，对于艺术世界的寻幽探胜，百明不仅不满足于“夷以近”，也不满足于停留在一个景点流连忘返，他要不断地向“险以远”迈进，以探索更加“奇伟瑰怪”的“非常之观”。以这样的进取精神，又正当盛年，来日方长，我相信不久的将来，他的艺术所呈现在我们面前的，又将是一个新的境界。

 

Luxuriant Elegance, Flourishing Magnificence

——Appreciating He Baiming’s Flower-bird Paintings

Xu Jianrong

 

He Baiming is a low-profile and diligent painter, who has persisted in the exploration of stroke and ink, color, and figure. His style is both persistent and variant. What is persistent is his connotation, which is fresh and bright, elegant and vulgar, which has strong amiability. What is most changeable is his outer expression, sometimes light and lucid, sometimes flowery and profound. It never ceases touching people with novelty. Years ago Baiming was the student of Deng Huainong, a well-known flower-bird painter in Shanghai. Mr. Deng is accomplished in inkwash painting, especially known for ink chrysanthemum. The painting is vigorous and tactful and has a kind of magnificence unnoticeable to laymen eyes. Under the guidance of Deng, Baiming studied all over the distillation of the Eight Masters of Tang-song, Shi Tao, Ren Yi and X uGu, and laid a sound foundation. However, due to his gentle and amiable personality, he prefers pizzazz and elegance to roughness and turbidity. Therefore, soon he transfers to combine color with meticulous strokes and writings.

About ten years ago, he painted flower-bird, also landscape. The stroke is bright and lyric, embodying and displaying an elegant kind of intelligence and talent; the color is mild, graceful, bright and pure, making the figures as crystal-clear as moistened by dew; the figures are specious, but inclining to the truth side; the art of composition especially incarnates his singular brilliance and ingenuity. Taking flower-bird painting as an example, although most of the works are flower and bird on disjunct branches with little emphasizing the deepness of space, unlike traditional disjunct branch flower-bird painting, he emphasizes not the real figures’ primary and secondary, light and strong, sparse and dense relations, but the sense of aesthetic wallop, so as to gain deeper apperception with more modern characteristics. This is reflected in the paintings, between bird and bird, bird and flower, branches and leaves of the flower, trunks and twigs; the thick and thin, long and short, withered and wet, dense and light of strokes; the black and white, red and green, yellow and gray of colors, ect. All of these can be elements composing his design and used in the creation of painting. The graceful and restrained artistic conception like the moist spring drizzle in “Apricot flower, spring drizzle, river’s south”, and the vigorousness and force like the moistureless autumn wind in “withered vines, olden trees, evening crows” are now two schools totally different from each other.

This innovation of Baiming won great compliment. Continuing this graceful style and ripening it gradually, he is sure to reap great harvest in the future. However, he is never satisfied and always seeks for more. Although this creative concept endows the tradition with liveliness in various aspects, especially the art of composition, it is still planar and cannot be deeper. Therefore, on the basis of the existing achievements, his art opens a new page together with the coming of the new millennium. At this stage, he transfers his focus from formal composition to subject matters and contents, and selects lotus, bamboo and combination of flower-bird and landscape as the most importance of the key ones. Meanwhile, to change from planar vision to deep and distant vision, he made breakthrough in his painting techniques by two ways. Firstly he reinforces the application of outlining and filling coloration and usually blends dual outlining and dot buttress in one frame, piling up the dual outline leaves and dot buttress leaves to strengthen the hierarchical and deepish vision. Secondly, he intensifies the use of thick color, and blends thick ink and light ink, thick color and light color in one frame. Strong cyan, green, yellow and vermilion cover the leaves dot buttress with thick ink, which makes the whole picture coruscating a flowery and magnificent vision. This obviously absorbs the advantages of ornament paintings. And the result is not to turn Chinese painting into ornament painting but to enrich the distant vision and color effect of the Chinese painting.

Taking the combination of lotus, bamboo, and flower-bird with landscape that he has been devoted to as an example, the lotus can be dual outlined, dot buttressed, with thick ink or light ink, filled with color after dual outline, or left blank after dual outline. All of these techniques can appear in one screen mixed but harmoniously. It is no longer an insipid dish of cole, but a fertile table of all Chinese dishes. As for his bamboo, the originality doesn’t lie in the outlining and dotting of the trunks, branches or leaves, but in the splendor collaboration with color and especially in the presentation of thick strong roots, which makes even disjunct bamboo not in a two-dimensioned plane, but in a three-dimensioned land. He mostly combines flower-bird with landscape and describes a corner of the mountains. All kinds of trees, flowers, grass exuberantly cover the whole screen, flourish and abundant, chanting dense country joy and great vitality. If we say that the paintings of Baiming ten years ago display light elegance like in “apricot flower, spring drizzle, River’s south”, then nowadays his paintings embody the flourish and magnificence of  “Green lotus leaves stretch to the borderless horizon, Bathed in sun shine lotuses display special ruddy color”.

From the art history of Baiming, we naturally associate it to a paragraph from Notes on traveling in Baochan Mountain by Wang Anshi, “ancient people could often learn from the sky and land, mountains and rivers, grasses and trees, bugs and fishes, birds and beasts so as to deepen and widen their thoughts. If a place is level and near, then there will be many travelers; if it is dangerous and distant areas, so few people manage to arrive at such places”. Obviously in the pursuit and exploration of art, Baiming is not only unsatisfied with “level and near”, but also unsatisfied with lingering on one scenic spot. He will unceasingly stride toward the “dangerous and distant” to explore the more “fantastic and magnificent” “unusual scenery”. With this enterprising spirit, being in his prime and having ample time, he is sure to present a bran-new art ambit to us in the future.               

                                                                                 Sep.8, 2006

 

作者：徐建融