Information About Li Jinyuan’s Art Activity

Li Jinyuan, born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China in 1945, works as a professor in the College of Arts, Sichuan Normal University. He also serves as director in charge of the Artistic Creation Commission. His other positions and titles are listed below:

A teacher of traditional Chinese painting to advanced scholars in Sichuan College and University Teachers’ Training Center
An associate director (specially invited) and research fellow in the Oriental and Western Culture Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences
A member of China Artists Association
A member of the Oriental Aesthetics Association

An Toulouse honorary citizen conferred by Toulouse Municipal Council

Li Jinyuan’s Paintings: a Struggle between Darkness and Light

By Benoit Vermander
Somehow, every painting is a trade-off between darkness and light, and this is especially true for Chinese painting, where the ink and the paper seem to be always in the process of negotiating the proportion of space that black and white will finally occupy, water mediating between the two protagonists. But it has always seemed to me that, in the paintings of Li Jinyuan, the trade-off between darkness and light becomes actually a struggle, and that this struggle is the very topic of the paintings.

If I am not mistaken, I have seen paintings encompassing the whole career of Li Jinyuan up to his present stage: his first paintings on the steps of his master Feng Jianwu (馮建吳) ; his patient exploration of the various regions of Sichuan, through which he found his personal style; the vivid paintings done during and after his travels in France and Thailand; the new exploration of the highlands of Abba and Liangshan that followed; the series made on the road of Mateo Ricci from the south of Italy to Beijing; recent and more abstract paintings that mix together ink and golden acrylic. Beyond the diversity of time, space and style, if I had to classify his works I would put them very simply into two categories: dark paintings and light paintings, each series complementing the other one.

The dark paintings testify to the difficulty that the light encounters in appearing and subsiding. Light seems for us a matter of fact, and we forget that it is obscurity that at first prevails in the universe and in our world as in our heart. In these works, the heaviness of darkness permeates the paper. The majesty of mountains becomes oppressive. The colors that are used make the black ink even darker. It is not that there is no light. It is that the light is fragile and in danger of being extinguished forever. Its presence is often noticed in the lower half of the painting, and one wonders if and how these sparks will rise throughout the obscurity. For sure, life is here - animals, shepherds, old women, and, while they walk, the same seemingly desperate struggle occurs within their hearts. Even in the recent paintings where golden acrylic is used, its main function seems to make us feel that the roots are struggling within the deep cave of the earth. Gold speaks about an inaccessible sun. The world of light and open air is dreamt from the heart of darkness.

In contrast, other paintings celebrate the irruption of light at the moment where the miracle just happens. It is a miracle indeed, for which nobody can account. Birds from Thailand or from the Pyrenees mountains sing softly. The Sichuanese fog becomes almost fluorescent. The hometown of Mateo Ricci is bathed in the ten thousand colors of the world. The white snow tells us that the heart in its original state is an everlasting morning. What remains of ink, shade and black seems always on the point to annihilate itself and to enter into the full glory of the light.

For sure, some of Li Jinyuan’s paintings stand somewhere between those two extremes- and these particular paintings might represent the best of his production. Dark paintings run the risk of being a bit melodramatic. Light paintings might sometimes lack in vigor and focus. Those paintings that stand just between the triumph of darkness and the sudden victory of light are the ones that testify best to Li Jinyuan’s quest for a state of harmony in which everything finds its true nature and its whole dimension. Then; the painting is as suspended between chaos and harmony, the two becoming one when light permeates the fibers of darkness while the darkness gives to the light the shadow under which the song of birds is to be heard.

After Li Jinyuan stayed in France for six months (August 1995-February 1996) some people were shocked by the intensity, the crudity of the colors used in several paintings. I think that this was indicative of a stage in which the affirmation of the final victory of light over darkness was the inner experience to be conveyed by the artist. In his following works, Li Jinyuan reached a synthesis between this groundbreaking experience and the roots of Chinese paintings. For indeed, the use of colors is always a difficult process in Chinese paintings. And this is not to be seen as a limitation of this form of art: in its spiritual essence, Chinese painting is not interested in the colors at such, it is interested in their source, their origin, i.e. the miracle throughout which light appears and gives birth to the endless variety of colors, shapes and shadows. I see Li Jinyuan’s present stage of creative work exactly in this way: a quest towards the origin of light, a quest towards the roots, the source, a quest towards this spark of fire, a spark so utterly fragile and all the time rising again, till it makes all things ablaze. Now that his heart is assured of the ultimate triumph of light he wants to turn himself towards the origin of the fire, towards the first spark that grows and rises in the same way as does the seed of the tree.

What I just wrote about the struggle between light and darkness could be found in other dimensions of Li Jinyuan’s paintings, for instance in the tension between the simple and the tortuous - simple forms organizing the whole of the paintings and conflicting movements within it that often signify darkness at work in the outer and the inner world. More important, Li Jinyuan’s work is multidimensional. It can be read at the same time as an aesthetic manifesto, an allegory of Chinese recent history, a commentary on the painter’s own spiritual development, an exercise in cross-cultural fertilization. It is the spiritual deepening that these works illustrate that is most striking to me. The struggle of which I am referring to is utterly non-violent. It is a struggle towards meekness and self-dispossession, a struggle that makes Li Jinyuan more and more vulnerable to the forces that shape the world, a struggle that places him always more at the epicenter of the confrontation between ugliness and beauty, meekness and hatred, darkness and light. The paintings as well as the painter’s soul become the space in which new heaven and new earth are taking shape through the suffering of childbearing.

Such spiritual depth makes indeed the artist so vulnerable that it is almost possible for the observer to discern some of the steps that the creator has still to ascend. What follows is so personal that I hesitate to say it, but I will have a try at it anyway. When looking at some paintings of Li Jinyuan one is led to wonder whether he is not a man for which giving is not easier than receiving. In other words, his works display a real generosity of the soul, a strong desire to communicate what inhabits his soul and his vision. At the same time, this vision is sometimes transmitted in a way that shows that the work of reformulating and transcribing the experience has taken precedence over the immediacy of the enlightenment. He receives the miracle with less simplicity than he gives it back.

Can Li Jinyuan greet the miracle of the coming of light in its purity without qualifying it by too many glosses? Can he receive and paint the manifestation of light in as transparent a fashion as it is originally given to us? Personally, I am convinced that one day he will indeed receive and paint the gift of life as the child whose soul becomes one with the light when he awakens in the morning. The struggle he paints is still taking place in his soul, but this very struggle leads him towards an even greater simplicity and immediacy of vision. The day Li Jinyuan totally surrenders himself to the light that inhabits the depth of his heart, then the source of light will flow from the very center of his paintings.

Tremendous Momentum and Thoroughly Portrayed Vitality

By Gao Ertai

? The modern world is pluralistic. Everything seems to spin fast in a kaleidoscope due to the historical contingency and uncertainty of psychological elements plus the control of mathematical digits and the arbitration of the literary post-deconstruction. It spins so fast that you can’t obtain your foothold. Great changes have taken place in a twinkle. People have lost their gravity and positions in a vague space in which it is difficult to tell what is right. There is no outlet for cultural life, which engenders a feeling of suffocation. Since 1998, there has been a movement by some to reconstruct universality for the purpose of having a place to settle down and get on with a life of no change in a world of constant change. It is not accidental, as the movement has aroused an extensive sympathetic response. However, the question is how we are going to reconstruct? Everyone is puzzled as what to do because there is an issue of how to break through the verbal hegemony of the post-modernism.
As matter of fact, it is unnecessary to reconstruct the universality because it has always existed and continues to exist. Even the most conservative liberals or individuals emphasize the value of freedom and human right is a universal value. Actually there is no particularity without universality. The issue of the relations between universality and particularity is a key to the theoretical debate over cultural conflicts between the Orient and West. The debate doesn’t need any arbitrators, nor does it necessarily demonstrate who is a success or a failure. At most, you are no more than a single number, but one part of infinite numbers. Besides, there are no regulations to follow. For an example, at present, those who persist in a large unified domain raise a cry more loudly emphasizing particularity instead, like the particularity of “ the values of Asia”.
During the debate, the painting artists keep silent. However, in the contemporary era, the greatest artists use brushes instead of languages to take part in the reconstruction project of university. They haven’t made conscious efforts for their participation, but they have achieved outstanding results in their work. In modern art galleries they exhibit the foremost and anti-aesthetic perception paintings, whose artists devote themselves still to the understanding and resonance, a kind of communication that depends on the universality.? As a matter of fact, the anti-aesthetic perception works possess a kind of universality, the universality of the aesthetic value.
There are two basic features manifested in the post-modern art language, one is contrary to the norm, and the other places an emphasis on contingency. It is a revolt against industrialization and digitization. In fact, it possesses the feature of the rural society. In the rural society the Chinese artists created some artistic terms like “ the way of no way”, and “the admirable talent in painting”, which actually contains the particular quality of the artistic language emerging from post-industrialization. It shows that the artistic language itself has university, transcending times and social patterns. The more talented an artist is, the more he is likely to be a master in the use of this language.
Li Jinyuan is a most prominent example. He skillfully combines the traditional brush methods ( Shufa, Cunfa, Taifa and other methods) and the Buddhist Chan-sect image method, as well as the abstract extensive splash-ink, extensive splash-color and others. (Shufa literally means the method of showing trees in various shapes; cunfa literally means the method of showing the shades and texture of rocks and mountains; taifa literally means the methods of showing bushes and forests in mountains or hills.) Due to these combinations, Li’s paintings appear splendid, bitter or imposing. Rather than the preposterous feelings from the Western post-modernism, his paintings present the shocking Oriental mysticism, a kind of Oriental art language that can be understood by the West. Let’s view a number of his recent works with << the Heaven >>, a series of paintings as representatives. These paintings seem to have a dialogue with the soul of the Oriental culture. With the profound sentiment of the local rivers and mountains, these paintings have vigorous brush-strokes, pursuing closely the primeval state of the universe. All these factors contribute to the creation of an immortal mysticism. Something common in thought is included in the book called << Dao De Jing>> by Lao Zhi, the essay called << On Qi Wu>> by Zhuang Zi, Monk Kugua’s Theory of “ One Stroke” and others. Such a thought is fully illustrated in Li’s paintings as a direct perceived form that shakes viewers in their innermost souls.
Li Junyuan was more skilled in small-sized paintings during his early painting career. Now, most of his current paintings are grandly composed in large sizes. As you begin to view his paintings, a desolate, but tremendous momentum surges forward towards your face. The vitality among ink-marks are thoroughly portrayed, as if the primitive life-forces were emerging in large number during the primeval state of the universe. Any modern artists relating to formalism are unable to paint it like Li does. The value of Li’s works lies not only in its vigorous and grand form, but also in the presentation of its cultural spirit through the form. As the cultural spirit is used to indicate and define the value of Asia, therefore the value is no longer available to those who persist in the large unified domain. Moreover, it has too many inter-links with the value of liberals. In this aspect the non-verbal high extent of art reached by an artist has also become a bridge between the Oriental and Western cultural spirits.
Those who strike at random based on their unrestrained disposition can’t reach the extent, let alone those who take pains to carry out their work by strength of their understanding. It is also a kind of the sound of nature. The extent can only be reached by those artists who have sufficient cultural nutrition and modern spirit to transcend varied wide gaps to absorb the essence in the center of the traditional culture.
What I am gratified is that, besides my wife and me, more and more Westerners are also beginning to understand this subject. I am very happy to see that Li Junyun’s paintings have been well-received in the West, resulting in a positive, symbolic significance. So I am honored to have the opportunity to write this preface to his paintings.

October, 2001 in New York
Note: Gao Ertai is a well-known aesthete and critic in China, and he now resides in the United States.

Art That Perches in the Spirit

By Xiao Huo
All great art, whether it is visual or auditory, tactile, gustatory or a combination thereof, does not exist simply for the gratification of the senses. It endures only because it is offered to the spirit.

The Buddha-dharma of Sakyamuni is unbounded. He created the 84,000 dharma-paths in hopes that humans can find joy and escape suffering; he wished to deliver them from birth, old age, sickness and death—from the six-fold cycle of transmigration—and to further their search for eternal happiness in the World of Bliss. Buddhism teaches us that the spirit needs to be established in faith; the body needs to expel desire. As long as we can help others and show concern for them, this is Mahayana; as long as we find self-composure and self-mastery, without harming others, we are worthy of Hinayana.

The study of Buddhism requires serenity and stability of the self: thus it is necessary to practice chan [dhyana] meditation. “Chan” is a way of becoming serene and stable, just as a road needs to be level before vehicles can move over it safely, and water needs to be tranquil before we can see deeply into it. As we draw a bow our movements need to be stable, otherwise the arrow will not hit its target. This is the objective of “chan.”?

The art of Li Jinyuan has just such a sense of chan about it.?

The painter shows his combined mastery of Eastern and Western practices in several series: “Heaven-Earth Expanse” and “Heaven, Earth and Man” (oils), as well as “Edge of Sky” (inkbrush works). The fluidly dynamic composition and the hypnotic brushwork testify to the monk-like austerities of the trials he endured, which he has distilled as a spiritual strength in his works. This bespeaks the price an artist pays to pursue his spiritual native ground, and is the creative result of a life lived for art.

In terms of color composition, the painter is fond of using pure, saturated “black,” “gold,” and “yellow,” giving rise to remarkable tension. “Black” incorporates strong earthiness and a pensive quality of human thought; “gold” and “yellow” reveal the serenity of heaven and the spiritual direction of human existence. In this space-time which embraces “heaven, earth and humankind,” a current of energy arises despite the quiet pictorial surface: we can sense a surging force capable of creating mountains, but also an unpredictable play of illusions. In the face of such visual impact, we seem absolved of any need for restless movement: our spirits are shaken, but at the same time we can enjoy the quietness achieved by the work as a whole. Although this quietness is momentary, when faced with such a meditation on values of mortality and faith, our spirits can sense equilibrium amidst the dynamic of development. Along with this comes wondrous, instantaneous insight.??????

Our post-industrial era is a time of artistic pluralism and intellectual dissonance. Painters use “black” to make their images, and we can affect a “black” look to enhance our appearance. We wear black clothes, shoes, hats; we drive a black SUV to where the soil is black, and indulge our senses there. We drink black beer and drink black coffee; we use “Blackie” toothpaste and avail ourselves of money tainted black. But these are only physical pleasures that we seize in this dusty world: where is the native ground for our spirits that are wandering between heaven and earth? We cannot expect artists to answer such a question. Yet Li Jinyuan uses his “self-enlightenment” to “enlighten others.” Through artistic expression he establishes a native ground where the spirit can perch. Though four/fifths of his pictorial surface represents the good earth in black, the remaining fifth portrays the sky in lyrical, glowing orange. This is sufficient to point the way to a vision of heaven.?

Such is the artistic force that a great work undertakes to convey!