The Indolent and Hollow Sense of Survival and Exploration on His Painting Style

By Li Xianting

At the beginning of this essay, I’d like to trace back to the origin of Ren Xiaolin’s style and settle a small dispute in art circles. A few years ago when Ren Xiaolin has his artworks’ debut, many people thought he followed the style of Jia Juanli. As a matter of fact, both of them were influenced by their teacher Cheng Conglin. And it is obvious that Cheng’s artworks in times of scar including Snow on Someday in 1968 created in early 1980s took the effect from the Russian Roving School. Meanwhile, Chen Danqing became the first to go beyond the Soviet Union style and turn to European style, making great impact upon the art circles. Cheng Conglin as well realized the meaning of the style transformation that the revolution of art doesn’t only exist in subjects and meanings, but more importantly lie in the changes of styles. The Old Chinese Workers and series of works about Yi nationality by Cheng are his attempt at a new style while tracing to the source of European art. In this new style, the overlying brushstrokes for forming the figures, which have brought sense of enrichment and solidness, are the key to his style transformation. The overlying process of the brush strokes has generated a mottled effect, which became the sign of Cheng’s style. It is this sign of Cheng’s style that acted as the starting point of style exploration for both Ren Xiaolin and Jia Juanli. Yet unlike Cheng, Ren and Jia changed the dignified strokes into light ones, especially for Ren with his spot-like strokes, which are like the ink deposition method of traditional Chinese inkwash drawing. The special effect from strewing of brush strokes has changed teacher Cheng’s mottled effect, while as to the color, under the influence of Cheng’s tone of bluish green, Ren created a more decorated and gorgeous feeling with peacock blue, and later a warm tone mainly with olivine color. As a matter of fact, Ren Xiaolin was earlier in forming the style, which could be seen from his painting exhibited in the Modern Art Show of China in 1989. However, various radical styles and events took the limelight in that show, and no one had focus on Ren Xiaolin’s painting. But Jia Juanli, as Ren’s classmate and colleague then couldn’t be more familiar with Ren’s style, not to mention that they learnt from the same teacher. There’s no need to argue who is the first style-maker. Yet Jia Juanli’s Sound of Silence was awarded a prize in Chinese Annual Show of Oil Painting in 1991, which made the style patent of Jia. As a matter of fact, Jia’s style was different from Ren’s at the very beginning, which could be seen from her painting Portrait of Qiu Jin highly appraised in The 1^st Oil Painting Show of China in 1988. And it is also quite a commonplace to see artists are influenced by each other. To settle the small dispute, I’m not intended to nor could I depreciate Jia Juanli.

In 1993, Ren Xiaolin had a solo exhibition in the art gallery of Beijing Crown Plaza Hotel and received consistent appreciation from the oil painting circles. In the seminar of the exhibition, many oil painters praised the effect of enrichment and refinement from the point-mode strokes as well as the mild and rich colors. They all agreed that Ren Xiaolin had formed a style combining both genuine oil painting and typical traditional Chinese painting. I have the same opinion too, while I also think that his style comes mostly from his feelings; in other words, he created a feeling since it is when his style is not only the exterior presentation, but an artistic language, which could illustrate the peaceful, tranquil and indolent sense in his paintings which look like the traditional Chinese paintings of beautiful women. The traditional Chinese paintings are more about freedom and tranquility withdrawing from the society, with preference on peace and quietness rather than excitement and passion. Sometimes I even think that in the forest of the global cultures, Chinese culture is one with femininity, which might come from the introverted and amiable character of Chinese people due to the living environment. Ren Xiaolin inherited the cultural tradition; in other words, in his characteristics, there are more gentle, mild and indolent features rather than desire to prevail, which have endowed his paintings with sense of traditional portraits of beautiful women. Meanwhile, he makes good use of the color of oil painting, adding warmth to the peaceful and indolent paintings. The genial sunshine penetrates into the room, bringing softness and warmth inside. The absence of strong contrast has helped avoid the strong visual effect of the painting. He was in love and happiness at that time. He needed to express his intimacy quietly. The soft and beautiful colors, the subtle brushstrokes and the plump and graceful bodies have helped avoid the realistic description of the characters and their looks, thus presenting warm and soft atmosphere in the painting. This is similar with the molding in New Paintings of Ladies from New Scholar’s Painting, focusing on the painter’s personal emotions with special strokes rather than describing the characters.

Putting together Ren Xiaolin’s artworks and the new scholar’s paintings and even the trend in modern literature zealous in describing privacy and intimacy, we could understand and feel that in the era lack of belief, people are trying to hide from the noisy world and create a soft world in their heart. Even when we are facing the heat wave of home fitment, we could understand people’s wishes to hide in a small building among the chaos of the hopeless world. Ren Xiaolin’s works are typical representation of the survival feeling, and he has transformed the feeling into poetry like the Graceful Poem of Song Dynasty. He’s enjoying in the poetic paintings his peaceful life and love with his wife Yang Yi, who is among the female characters in the paintings.

The years after 1993, especially the recent two years have witnessed tremendous change of his style. Beautiful women are replaced by men, the mild warm color are replaced by dim bluish grey, and the overlying and refined strokes popular among his audience are replaced by another method. He employs drawknife so much that in order to figure out the connection between the background and the characters, he scrapes every time after he draws, only leaving small part that he considers appropriate. In the processing of the paintings, he has found some obscure feelings completely different from before. When he talked about the original subjects of the paintings, he said he had never been to a thermae before, and when he for the first time saw naked men in the hot steam, he was hit by goamiss and indisposition. He recalled that “the masculinization in men’s bodies was weakened. The flesh was obvious. The traditional value of man suddenly collapsed.” As far as I see to the collapse, for one hand, man’s body that he’s familiar with is the symbol of health and strength, while the bodies in his paintings are not only fat and weak, but also immersed in fleshliness. The figures in his paintings are his illustration to the collapsed value. On the other hand, the deep meaning is that the society and social value with the symbol of man is collapsed in Ren Xiaolin’s heart. In other words, the disappointment to men in the thermae has aroused his disappointment towards the living environment. People couldn’t always live in his own peaceful world and he has to face the social reality, which, unfortunately, is so hopeless. This is the cause of his style transformation and the explanation of the darkness and obscurity in his paintings. However, Ren Xiaolin is as eased as the very beginning, thus it still could be seen indolence from the characters in his paintings, which became the connection between his previous artworks and the recent ones. However, the previous indolence is warmth and beauty of ease, while the recent one has changed them to some desperate boredom and hollowness, leaving the world only with an utterly useless person with fleshliness.

Last year when I saw these paintings of Ren Xiaolin, the first thought coming into my mind was the picture of Han Xizai Giving A Banquet, to which, however, Ren Xiaolin paid no attention. I think there might be a connection between them, the déjà vu depravation, indolence, hedonism and boredom.