If a novel artistic form needed to be found in the 20th century on the road blending east and west and boasting a unique aesthetic taste from the perspectives of both occidental and oriental arts, then Wu Guanzhong’s painting is the most representative. This can find full expression in many of his artistic works that facilitate his expansion of the Chinese artistic tradition in terms of its development and richness. Although opinions are divided regarding his artistic contribution and the value of his works, one thing that is certain is that Wu Guanzhong’s artistic achievement cannot be neglected as an assimilation of western art and the attendant expansion of Chinese art. Compared with his contemporaries and those after him who take one-sided and extreme attitudes to rend artistic wholeness apart and assert “Formalism”, he is more levelheaded and wiser in respect to understanding the formal meaning of art.

　　Zhao Wuji and Zhu Dequn, who went to France almost at the same time as Wu Guanzhong, were more actively engaged in western Abstractionism while Wu Guanzhong, adhering to the idea of a “Kite shall never desert its line”, attached more importance to the local cultural milieu and the acceptance of local arts while assimilating western modern art in general and Abstractionist art in particular. Like the majority of artists working in the Chinese cultural milieu of the 20th century, he fostered habitual awareness of and fondness toward Chinese traditional culture and art. Wu Guanzhong, like his mentors, consciously undertook the revitalization of national culture. Under Pan Tianshou’s guidance and his own practice, the painting tradition since Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties laid a significant foundation for his artistic approach that primarily concerns the rhythm of lines.

　　Unlike many critics who compare and evaluate oriental and occidental culture, Wu Guanzhong assimilated the formal elements of western art, personally championing modern art and patiently elucidating in words the relationship between modern art and traditional art in China and western countries. This was purely from his passionate and insightful perception of art. He argues that many formal elements in modern art are intrinsic to traditional art, and that modern art does no more than disclose and highlight the laws of these art forms. Painting is a means of observing, refining and completing reality from the artist’s perspective…these propositions give rise to much introspection and contention in the ideas of fine art in contemporary China, but are claimed in regard to the transformation of audience’s appreciation. Many of his propositions on art represent a reflection on and exploration of the relationship between the changing times and development of art, including the pressure of society and the viewing habits of the audience, and what these impose on artistic innovation.

　　The second volume of his complete works contains his watercolor (including a few works with gouache) and oil paintings of the 1950s and watercolor and oil paintings of the 1960s to the mid-1970s.

　　In the early the 1950s, Wu Guanzhong returned to his homeland from Europe, pledging confidently to “paint oil paintings liked by Chinese people” with the techniques he acquired in the west. The subsequent politically oriented artistic criticism, however, disqualified the art he cherished as “bourgeoisie formalism”. In the 20-odd years that followed, the fabricated spell of “uglification of workers, farmers and soldiers” kept haunting him, and thus he abstained from painting realistic human figures. In the early 1950s, he painted many watercolor works and gouaches primarily with landscape as their theme exhibiting his strong interest in architecture, the street, the fair, sky, and shadow in water, field and trees. Compared with his works created during his stay in Paris, he tended to describe reality. This is despite the fact that the “realism” advocated at the time imposed a great impact on him. To some extent, from an overall perspective, what should be also taken into account is the Chinese local backdrop that afforded him an experience completely different from that of Paris. His landscape paintings boast richer brush strokes and landscapes are presented in a more flexible way. His watercolor and oil paintings of the 1960s also progressively gave expression to his variation in shape-formation and flexibility in brush stroke.

　　Based on his paintings of the 1960s, he developed a style that integrated “richness and luxuriance” with “simplicity and innocence” in the 1970s. For one thing, he tended to be increasingly simple in shape-formation and image treatment in a bid to refine infinite “simplicity” and “innocence” in each image. He hunted for the most succinct and purest approach to expression in each “facet” and “line”. This, however, resulted in “the richest and most luxuriant” painting skills that incorporated an oriental poetic sensibility. For another thing, a sense of fullness and lushness is achieved in the richness inherent to the simple and innocent “shape and facet” in a most unexpected way. The artist was exploring a kind of painting presentation skill rich in poetic taste and visual expansion concerning the interaction and intermingling of innocence and sophistication, pureness and variation.

　　We can find a clear thread running through the watercolor and oil paintings Wu Guanzhong created from the 1950s to the 1970s. The thread comprises the change in his artistic style and taste after returning from France, namely, the change from a modernist style that prevailed in French artistic works to a realistic style and then ultimately to a freehand brushwork style. Different images are placed in the same painting as if he were painting a scene from the imagination. This developmental process is traceable both through the particular social background of China and the artist’s personal subjective experience. Specifically, since 1949 art in China was encouraged to describe reality, to reflect the pragmatic and utilitarian attitudes Chinese society took towards art in 20th century. This kind of attitude can date back to the social elites of the 1920s exemplified by Kang Youwei and later by Xu Beihong, among others, who facilitated the mainstream status of a realistic style in Chinese fine art by clamoring for and personally establishing realistic art in the Fine Art education system. There were profound political, social and historical reasons for doing this.

　　After returning to his homeland in the 1950s, Wu Guanzhong made some realistic landscape paintings under the influence of the realistic approach to painting advocated in China. His sensitivity to form and unique visual presentation skills, however, can find expression even in the works he created during his study in Paris (e.g. his works in 1950 when he returned to his homeland). A Church in a Paris Suburb (1950) and A Village in a Paris Suburb I and II (1950) give expression to his approach to the division of facets and treatment of the relationship between line, point and facet. Besides, such division and treatment evince a kind of mellowness and rhythm rich in melody--the rhythm consists of the contour line of the facet and ends up in a visually coherent line in paintings. Despite that his painting style is different in the early, middle and late stages of his artistic career, one feature in common is the unique dynamism evinced in his works, namely, the connection of visually flowing point, line and facet, which can be traced back to his early watercolor paintings. His realistic painting style of the 1950s may be rightly explained by the aspirations he cherished when he returned to his homeland--he thought at that time “his artistic practice is rooted in the homeland”, and “He is determined to blaze his own trail with his own footprints to paint oil paintings liked by Chinese people.” Expression of his own feelings through the description of specific objects is a direct means to show his attachment to the homeland. Additionally, Chinese local customs and practices, including the natural environment and its specific physical features and the tastes and attitudes toward life of the Chinese people, all constitute greatly significant themes for Wu Guanzhong, despite that he studied overseas for three and a half years.

　　More importantly, he reconsidered his orientation in art, especially in regards to formal language in painting that, as a rule, gradually materializes by virtue of practice, thinking and exploration over time. From his works of this period like Wisteria (1956), A Harbour (1957), A Street Scene of Beijing (1955) and A Rural Town of the South (1957), among others, we can find that he focuses his attention on subjects that embody the taste, interest and imagination of Chinese culture. To him, the small bridge near a household with water running below south of the Yangtze River represents a dense and “thriving” population and mellow pastoral milieu full of melodious rhyme and rhythm, while works like A Street Scene of Beijing, A Festival at Lhasa (1961) also display the artist’s great mastery in representing the customs of different localities. Comparatively, the feeling he invested in works depicting the watery country south of the Yangtze River is more natural and clear. The artist describes the physical features of the subjects in these works, like the structure of houses, layout of streets and the relationship between human beings and the environment. What is more important, however, is that he exudes recollections of childhood and spontaneous nostalgia mixed with sentimentality by virtue of what he chooses to retain as subject in the work, as well as melodious brushwork when portraying these scenes. This also brings an impressive expressionism to these paintings from life, which compared with the Formalist and Conceptualist works prevailing at that time, are full of passion. However, compared with works he later created with stylization, his works at that time cannot justifiably claim aforesaid features. One point we can surely see from the contextual perspective is that he attaches importance to and is in pursuit of the tastes in Chinese culture as well as the fun and interest in life of Chinese people. He also attaches importance to the natural flow of emotions in painting and always hunts for corresponding approaches to intensify the overall contagious charm of his works.

　　There is undoubtedly a process that facilitates the development from the description of specific objective subjects to the combination of objects, which compose a subjective image, and from painting from life to the selection and restructuring of scenery. It can be seen from his works in the 1960s that his generalization, simplification and refinement of scenery is made synchronically with his exploration of point, line and facet in painting. This can find expression in his works like A Small River by the Village (1962), A Scene of the Water Country (1964), A Tiny Boat in the Water Country (1962) and The Hometown (1964), among others. These works are obviously different from those he created with his painting style of the 1950s in that his interest in the details of objective subject has been replaced by his attachment to large chromatic areas in the paintings. He is more selective and more generalizing in respect to scenery and the depiction of details of objects that are incorporated into the large chromatic area. Take as an example The Hometown, which consists of three big chromatic areas, namely deep green water, warm-colored sky and river beaches and white houses separating water from sky. Flowers on the bank extending to the river are represented with colorful dots while black lines various in length and height symbolize the black tiles on the roofs of houses on the opposite side of the river. The effect is to dimly separate white walls from warm-color sky. Dark-colored waves painted with big brush strokes are hidden under large patches of watercolor and the artist discriminates the light-receptive side from shade and carefully details water waves with the use of highlights. We can understand from these paintings how partial and specific depiction complies with an overall chromatic exploration.

　　His works in this period also reveal the embryo of the new development of assimilating the halo-dyeing characteristic of Chinese water-ink painting and brush strokes of freehand brushwork genre paintings of flower and bird. A Tiny Boat in the Water Country and Two Tibetans (1961), Spring Rain of the South(1962) can be cited as examples. The artist taps into the liquid properties of watercolor and the energy exhibited in the change of strokes in traditional Chinese paintings to try a more succinct and generalizing approach. As for this exploration, Wu Guanzhong once mentioned in his later reviews.

　　 I was primarily dedicated to oil painting in the early years and meanwhile also studied traditional Chinese painting. Watercolor bridges the two major painting types of the west and east…The color in oil painting and the ink in water-ink painting meet in watercolor, getting along and caring for each other day and night. The approaches to a national oil painting practice is infinite--The liveliness of watercolor dilutes the heaviness of oil painting to produce an audience-friendly effect in the form of transparent thin color to adapt to the aesthetic taste of Chinese people.

　　My preference for works of Shi Tao, Zhu Da (Badashanren) and watercolor speaks for the integration of a water-ink palette in my watercolor paintings. I am artistically indebted to an oil painting practice that exhibits Chinese sensibilities, water-ink painting depicting western landscape and watercolor painting alike. They interact with and supplement one another beyond my consciousness…The capacity of watercolor to depict scenery is far weaker than that of oil painting, but the water in it can be brought into full play to express a kind of untrammeled energy… My watercolor paintings of the 1950s and the 1960s are essentially pregnant with my approaches to handling oil and ink-color paintings in my later artistic career.”----Watercolor Painting and I

　　The interaction and inter-supplementation of the above-mentioned three painting types can also find expression in such works as: Wisteria (1956), which witnessed his employment of Impressionist colors and techniques despite of the innocence of colors. The innocence, intermingled with water, facilitates interaction of colors, resulting in haziness and richness. The ground and chair, set off by mottled sunlight flowing through the top of vines and its resultant shade, are depicted very strongly by the artist. The painting obviously combines the formal effects of Chinese and western paintings, featuring richness in color and expression inherent in oil painting and liberal expressiveness intrinsic to water-ink painting. A Vegetable Market of Shaoxing (1957) gives more clear expression to these features. A mirage bathing the architecture arising from free-hand brush strokes constitutes a contrast with the small boat under the noon sun, hence enhancing the richness of structure. The bustling crowds of people under sunlight flowing from roof end up becoming mottled shadows and bright red and blue dots that intensify the transparency and spaciousness of the shadow. Contrast of light and shadow typical of western painting and the brush strokes of traditional water-ink painting are employed by the artist to handle the interaction of abstraction and concreteness, resulting in a kind of relativity and visual novelty. The painting, in this sense, boasts a larger capacity and richer content. It is the artist’s study of painting generally, as well as the inheritance and integration of existing classical painting techniques that facilitate the acquisition of the special capabilities and prompt the artist to further break through stereotypical approaches to painting including the approaches he has arrived at for further development. Paintings of similar nature include Jian Lake of Shaoxing (1957), Washing (1959), among others.

　　Wu Guanzhong’s oil paintings from the 1950s-1960s and contemporary watercolor paintings have many aspirations in common but, compared with watercolor painting, oil painting is the field that the artist really focused his attention on. Obviously, the properties of oil painting could better serve his artistic purposes albeit he was later attached to water-ink painting. His interest in Chinese culture and fondness of oil painting combine to urge him to experiment with water-ink on canvas and experiment with bright-color and heavy-ink works of modern art on rice paper.

　　In the 1950s and the early years of the 1960s, Wu Guanzhong still attached importance to traditional realistic approaches to oil painting featuring heaviness, richness and interaction between light and shadow, which can find expression in the series of paintings from life in Mount Jinggang and serial paintings of Tibet, namely, A Street Scene of Lhasa I, II and III (1961), among other paintings. Impressionist paintings and the Academy style of European paintings of the 19th century can be seen to have found its way into these paintings, finding expression in plein air sensation, the stress the classical painting school lays on the contrast of light and shadow, the perception of atmosphere and background and relationship among persons, etc. This is surely related to the artistic style and tastes the Chinese fine arts circle advocated and found interest in at that time. However, use of these stylistic features also shows its indebtedness to the development and exploration of the artist’s own linguistic style in that Wu Guanzhong was devoted to the process of painting from life. The Five-Pilgrim-Horse-to-the-Heaven Ridge of the Jinggang Mountains (1959), A Spring Morning of the North (1964), The Dragon King Pood of Lhasa (1961), Sunshine after Snow in the Mountain Village (1964) and so on, seen from an overall perspective, all feature a planar style in the use of color, combination of lines with plane and emphasis on the richness of color in big chromatic areas, etc. Relatively speaking, he is more committed to doing the spadework for oil painting than watercolor painting in terms of exploration of forms. Partially, this is because oil painting, compared with watercolor, is not equally responsive to infiltration and integration due to the properties of its material. Rather, the brush strokes and chromatic layers in oil painting palpably come into view with each specific “treatment” distinctly “recorded” in the painting. Take as example Hometown Morning (1960), in which houses in the distance, the image of the rising sun reflected inversely in water, wooden boats nearby, chromatic layers of water surface and contrast of cold and warm colors, are presented with heavy brush stroke after stroke albeit the water surface in the painting cannot be presented in the form of dissolution of water and pigments typical in the creation of watercolor paintings. As a matter of fact, these techniques represent European approaches to oil painting.

　　Additionally, there are new formal elements Wu Guanzhong employs in his paintings, for example, innocence and simplicity of white walls, stone bridge and roof nearby and in the distance set off by multi-layer and “thick” water surfaces. Contrary to heavy coating and layering of paint typical of western oil painting, simplicity and innocence embody the ingenuity and delicacy of the watery country south of the Yangtze River as well as narrowness of space. White walls play a significant part to express “ventilation” and “blankness” in the painting, and cannot afford too much “materialism” in that they are too “material”, the whole space ends up too crowded, which hamstrings the “ingenuity” of the watery country and it’s melting with local tastes. Wu Guanzhong attaches importance to highlighting some distinctive details when generalizing and simplifying the structure of the painting. Bamboo poles on boats nearby constitute ingenious intersecting lines leading the visual line through the holes of vault to the distance…Wu Guanzhong grew up in the watery country from childhood and could not wait to meditate on how to depict the features of the watery country. Paintings of this kind best exhibit his unique attachment to the scenery of the “watery country south of the Yangtze River”.

　　Many contemporary artists depicted the watery country south of the Yangtze River but it is hard, if not impossible, for them to express the feeling of both ingenuity and solidness with conventional approaches to painting. This is because the audience, exposed to many stereotypical depictions of the scenery by artists, develops a kind of aesthetic fatigue; hence unique scenery degenerates into a mediocre depiction. Wu Guanzhong is wary of the many “travel-note style” paintings with a theme similar to his “watery country”. He realized that the distinctive scenery he chose for painting was not ideal because he was prone to fall prey to the specific details and exterior “likeness” of the subject. He argued, however, that “Likeness is not equal to beauty”. Painting works cannot claim the “feeling of beauty” unless the scenery depicted therein can excite a particular kind of imagination and emotion in the audience. Without this excitement the paintings are no more than “record” that “the artist once traveling there”. The approaches to painting he summarized himself are based on the thought that form precedes scenery just like the “performer-orientation” in Chinese opera: The “play is written based on the features of a gifted performer”. His “form precedes scenery” means the beauty of form stimulated by the subject urges him to consider how to express this feeling of beauty in painting. Based on resultant needs, he forages for point, line, facet, color and concrete subject in conformity with the feeling of beauty. Therefore, he can make attempts on various structures, countless points, lines, facets and colors in a bid to come up with an optimal composition.

　　He said: “I like the artistic conception in paintings, which, however, shall be integrated with and embodied through form. Excavation of the artistic conception of objective subjects through my painting sensibility is the core of my artistic career.”----Review of My Oil Painting Practice

　　Wu Guanzhong cherishes a special exploration of the fusion of traditional Chinese painting and oil painting. Works like By the Side of the Fuchun River (1963), The Fuchun River (1963), Weishan Lade (1962), among others, give expression to his adoption of traditional approaches to painting mountain, water and trees. Aesthetic conceptions featuring “hollowness”, “depression and bleakness”, “disinterestedness” and “untrammeled” inherent in traditional Chinese paintings are evinced directly or are implied in his paintings. Obviously, these features are different from the “heaviness”, “stickiness” and elasticity characteristic of oil painting materials. As a result, Wu Guanzhong adopts an approach to watercolor painting, allowing water to dilute the “stagnancy and heaviness” intrinsic in oil. What merits notice, however, is that his works that best boast Chinese characteristics not only bring into play “water properties” but also incorporate comprehensive content as well. This includes the planar treatment of colors, abstract structure of point, line and facets, simplification of the relationship between concrete objects and the combination of chromatic heaviness and richness typical of oil painting with the clear and fresh style inherent in Chinese folk arts, together with the elegance and softness intrinsic to traditional Chinese paintings.

　　Wu Guanzhong’s works in this period give adequate expression to the artistic styles prevailing in the 1970s. Longevity and Harvest (1959) and Castor Beans (1962) can be taken as examples which give priority to the depiction of the top or half branch of flowers, fruits, grasses and trees. This approach highlights the major part of the painting, substantially conducive to composition, brush stroke and combination of lines and facets. Shape and properties of the major subject can also be retained in this way, serving his goal of “Kite shall never desert its line”. A Mulberry Garden (1963) is a painting attaching importance to both the relationship between lines and facets as well as the background and atmosphere. Mountains in the distance and ground nearby coexist in the same chromatic system and white lines are used to distinguish mountain from trees. If the audience neglects the mountains and trees in the painting, it is apprehended as a succinct and abstract work consisting of curves and straight lines. A white sheep is depicted in the foreground of the painting in a realistic way, which brings the audience back to reality from the abstract form. Obviously, the sheep, not belonging to the scenery, is moved and placed there to satisfy the needs of the image. This can find clearer expression in The Hometown of Lu Xun (1957): Houses with black tiles and white walls are arranged rhythmically, palpably distinctive from the sceneries he presents in his oil paintings from life. We can see that he rearranges scenery for the purpose of painting form and moves together distinctive scenes to compose the image in the painting. He recollected that once he climbed up to the peak of a mountain to figure out the artistic conception of “small bridge, flowing water and households” due to a lack of concentrated big scenery, which can easily result in triviality in image-formation.

　　Green water surrounded households that were located among rivers. Facets and artistic thread materialized. The embryo of structure sort of came into being!…When you have observed carefully, you can only see the roofs of houses nearby ending up in black patches. Walls in the distance can be seen in the form of white patches. Contrary to the conventional approaches to painting, I put the bright white area in the center, which takes up the major part of the painting and the walls of houses constitute the foreground of the painting set off by black roofs in the distance. This is primarily for the effect of black and white composition in the painting…The primary scenes and characters derive from paintings from life in the city including woods in Shaoxing Middle School and the old bridge in Xilang----Three Gorges and Hometown of Lu Xun--Recollection of Artistic Creation

　　The work consists of pure black and white as primary colors and winding and expressive lines as primary structural lines. The integration of various white rectangular patches with oblique black patches produces the rhythmical effect of “big pears and small pearls alike are falling down to the jade plate”. The overall picture in the painting reminds the audience of the artistic conception about the homestead in Chinese literature and poems as well as the affection for the watery country south of the Yangtze River of contemporary Chinese artists. From Fishering Boats on the Fuchun River (1963) and A Tibet Buddha Wall (1961), we can see his approaches to highlighting the main body of the picture and his balanced way of retaining vividness and immunity from obstructing the overall train of thought in the picture in time of dealing with details. The two aforementioned paintings consist of tasteful lines and realistic scenes expressed in light of the combination of patterns. Fishering Boats on the Fuchun River reveals in its foreground transparent sailing boats on which white fishing nets are propped up just like a blanket woven with yarn. Considering the size of the fishing boat and its distance from the artist, the lines making up the fishing net are unlikely to be recognized clearly but Wu Guanzhong “wove and painted” these “white blankets” with light brush strokes. They form heavy, loose and transparent white patches in a unique way and, together with the light-colored sky, constitute the major part of the picture. Some dark-colored brush strokes in the net like the curves tangled with water waves enhance the transparency of the fishing net and boost the richness and rhythm of structural lines in the painting. In A Tibet Buddha Wall, we can see a large section of “white wall” embedded in the foreground of the picture comprising mountains and rivers and on the wall are “ancient murals” with mottled colors and flying lines that reasonably stand out against the backdrop of tranquility inherent in the mountain-water environment. Murals found in outlying areas never frequented by humans give full expression to the historical vicissitudes and law of “Seas become mulberry fields just in a wink of the eye”. The queer uniqueness of “Buddhist murals” and the tranquility of nature constitute a sharp contrast, impressing as they do viewers inerasably. Wu Guanzhong placed a tent under the “Buddhist mural” in which three leisurely persons are cooking or resting. This seems to be supplementing the scene, further intensifying the “feel of distance” exuding from the background. He said:

　　“The approach to painting from life similar to the way street peddlers tout their goods is a betrayal of impressionism, so I’m intended to be apprenticed to Shitao, an artist “scouring for fantastic peaks as draft for painting”. Preference for similitude and vividness in image and color, transcendence of stereotype and adoption of approaches to painting from life featuring “grafting one twig on another” and “removing mountains and draining seas”--This is roughly my path to oil painting from life for 30-odd years.----Three Gorges and Hometown of Lu Xun--Recollection of Artistic Creation

　　The approach of “removing mountains and draining seas” is a significant factor underlying Wu Guanzhong’s free and untrammeled galloping in the field of artistic creation. His immunity from manacles and yokes of various artistic traditions or his ultimately free employment of various traditional resources in artistic creation owe their indebtedness to his free combination of images. He continues to paint trees, houses, flowers, chickens and ducks, persons, flowing water, clouds in the sky, the undulating range of mountains he is interested in. He also abstractly arranges points, lines, facets and colors to form capricious images. He made attempts on depiction of whatever image he conceives in his heart by shape-formative means whether or not these images were seen or imagined by him or simply appeared in his dreams or poems.

　　Wu Guanzhong reaped a bumper harvest of oil paintings from 1970 to 1975. Relatively, the amount of watercolor paintings was dwindling and furthermore, his watercolor painting was developing along the trend of “water properties” intrinsic to traditional Chinese water-ink paintings with brush stroke and use of water more related to the energy inherent to Chinese traditional paintings. His works in this period include The Hua Stream of Guiyang (1972), Lotus Flowers (1973), The Huang Mountains (1973) and Boats (1974), to mention a few among others. A new tendency in his style during this time found its way to such works as Pines (1973), Lotus Flowers of the Purple Bamboo Garden (1973), Water Lilies (1975) and Mountain Rocks of Guilin (1975). These works, with gouache as their medium, look more solid and substantial than watercolor paintings. The mystic atmosphere oozing from these paintings can scarcely be found in his works prior to them, primarily exhibited through the artist’s arrangement of large dark-colored areas in the picture against a light-colored background. Pine and Mountain Rocks of Guilin are of this nature. Sometimes light-colored objects are placed against a dark-colored backdrop, as in Water Lilies, A Spring of the Lao Mountains (1975) and Fish in Play(1974). These works have clear-cut brush strokes, meanwhile boasting the feel of both transparency and opaqueness typical of watercolor in their treatment of margins. Generally speaking, however, the approach of large dark-colored areas as the main body of a picture was seldom employed before but thenceforth repeatedly appeared in oil paintings. The serious and gloomy atmosphere evinced from still life works Loquats (1975) and Flowers (1973) is like a delusion sneaking into the artist’s heart. They seem to bear resemblance to part of Lin Fengmian’s works in terms of psychological significance but substantially distinctive from the majority of Wu Guanzhong’s works at that time that tended to focus on the external word from which to forage for formal structure and vivid images.

　　Wu Guanzhong’s works in the 1970s, against the background of the outbreak of the “Proletariat Cultural Revolution” in 1966, possess the tints of seriousness and gloominess, and hence are richer in content. Artists during that period were prohibited from painting, teaching and writing. In the early 1970s, together with the faculty and students of his academy he was dispatched to the countryside of Hebei province to do manual work until 1972 when he was allowed to paint one day every week. This kind of restriction is traumatic to an artist in pursuit of freedom and his interior depression and sorrow cannot be exaggerated. Due to lack of painting tools during the period of rural labor, dung baskets were used as painting kits and easels and pictures were painted on paperboards. Wu Guanzhong is jokingly named as belonging to the “Dung Basket Painting School”, but he produced during this period a number of significant oil paintings predominated by two types of themes that seldom appeared in previous paintings, namely, rustic farming households and crops in North China. The former type of paintings include A Thatch Door (1972), The Landlord’s House (1972), A New House (1972), A Date tree with Children Around (1974), A Pair of Swallows (1972) and Loofah Fruits (1972) and so on. These works lack the modest elegance and water-ink tints evinced in his works themed with the watery country south of the Yangtze River and are not comparable to them in terms of ingenuity and flexibility in graphic composition, but the highlighting of theme and succinctness in graphic composition are given fullest play. The graphic composition of some of these paintings is as direct, simple and economical as that of folk papercuts. The distant view in the graphic composition of A Thatch Door primarily consists of straight lines with the horizontal lines crossing the whole picture and the door in the center right dividing the horizontal wall into halves. The front view of the painting is a fence gate made of firewood represented entirely by curves. The left and right sides of the central view are a small tree and a wood ladder respectively, represented by two bended lines responding to each other. Under the firewood door are chicks foraging for food under the guidance of a hen. Against the wall leans a bicycle and under the eaves a swallow is flying and dancing. The work is rich in life, laid out with quiet and lyrical tints and vivid images. The structure is dominated by horizontal lines, which end up impressing the audience with the feeling of steadiness and evenness. Gentle and upward curves are reminiscent of rising cooking smoke as well as tender and affectionate rivers and streams. Hens, chickens, swallows and bicycles are the optimistic generalization of the farming household’s daily life. It can be felt that despite that the artist was in the period of “fighting sky and beating earth” and ideological reformation through collective manual labor, his heart was still brimming with tender affection for the world and everything in it. Variation in environment failed to change his inherent gift as an artist, namely the sensitivity to beauty and desire to express it.

　　“Crops” as the primary subject for painting is also a phenomenon meriting notice in Wu Guanzhong’s paintings in the early 1970s. Like his paintings about the farming household’s living environment in the north, works relating to the “crops in the north” are also symbolic. Works of this type include A Tree in the Li Village (I, II) (1972), The Sorghum (1972), The Sorghum and the Cotton (1972) , Pumpkins (1972), Melon Vines (1973), Pomegranates (1974), A Huge Harvest (1974) and Maize Cobs (1974), among others. The series of paintings themed with sorghum, which appear upstanding and robust under Wu Guanzhong’s brush, are typical of these paintings. The thick sorghum stems are painted horizontally with an oil painting brush and sorghum leaves are coated evenly and then painted with the handle of the brush into hard thin lines. Interestingly, the crop was painted close almost from an upward angle. The horizon extends right under the robust head of sorghum and the luxuriant stems and leaves under the sorghum head can almost be described as too dense to allow for ventilation. A couple of robust sorghum heads shoot up into blue sky. From between the thick and strong sorghum stems, we can see that the crops extend as far as the horizon. Sorghum, the most common food crop in the north and hence a metaphor of life, is linked to land and human beings through the artist’s rich imagination in the painting. In terms of form, the painting consists primarily of horizontal and vertical lines, claiming landmark significance in structuring. In terms of the relationship between light, shadow, darkness and lightness, dark colors constitute four fifths of the painting, the area between sky and horizon making up the remaining one fifth. The artist elevated the horizon to make room for dense stems and leaves extending upward to absorb sunlight and air. Despite that the horizon halves the painting in The Sorghum and the Cotton, the dense sorghum heads extend beyond horizon into sky and slightly wilting sorghum heads painted in dark colors on the stems seem to show their defiance of and fight against fate.

　　Apart from lush and dense fruit trees, humans are also depicted in his A Tree in the Li Village. Obviously different from the crop-themed paintings, paintings about lush and dense fruit trees give hints to his attempts to paint big trees. He had previously depicted a tree as the theme of the painting in Tuan Town of Beijing (1963) but the tree then was more of a scenic import and had a graphic function rather than an independent life as evinced in his above-mentioned work in which the artist endowed the big tree with certain ideological implications. Based on a comparison of a series of big-tree-themed works by Wu Guanzhong, his goals in handling different big trees can be discriminated. Take as an example The Landlord’s House and A Tree in the Li Village, which obviously give direct and ideal illustration to life in the countryside featuring rusticity, purity, fullness and continuity symbolized by land and crops in the countryside. Wu Guanzhong spread the whole picture with the entire big tree dotted with red fruit. The red fruit is obviously an exaggeration and used for decoration because all the branches, thick or thin, are laden but the limbs of the tree are not bent despite the size and weight of the red fruit, some of them bigger than the heads of people under the trees. Thus, the painting follows the rich and strong folk art tradition, relishing in a bright and warm atmosphere. Two White Poplars (1975), A Greeting Pine (1974), A Lacebark Pine of the Former Imperial I, II and III (1975), Deodars of Qingdao (1974) and Pines (1974) and so on, are evidently related to the relationship between human and nature, human and society as well as human and the self. Pines are anthropomorphic in traditional Chinese paintings, especially those depicting trees, and the various ethical metaphors related to pines are deeply rooted in people’s hearts. In these paintings, Wu Guanzhong tapped into the relevant resources he acquired while doing study of and research on traditional Chinese paintings, but the efforts he made on transformation primarily in respect to form and structure can be discerned. Big trees in his paintings are more objective, visible and vivid in detail such as Twin Poplars. In addition to fostering the great image of anthropomorphic pines, Wu Guanzhong also attaches importance to the rhythm arising from the expression of branches and forks of trees as well as accidental imprints left in the process of brushwork. That is to say, western approaches to scenic painting were introduced to depict trees that also assimilated the cultural conceptions of big trees inherent to traditional Chinese culture. This can find expression is such works as Pines of the Huang Mountains (1974) and By the Side of the Jialing River (1973), which boasts a perfect atmospheric background and treatment of space as well as perfect expression of vigor and vitality exuding from the pines.

　　The series of paintings Wu Guanzhong created to describe the beauty of nature in the early 1970s were like the genre paintings of flowers blooming in plains and fields--Mountain Flowers (1972), Field Chrysanthemums Iand Ⅱ(1972), A Reed Pond I and II (1972), Sparrows (1972), A Flock of Geese on Tai Lake (1974), A Lotus Pond (1975) and so on. In these works, Wu Guanzhong experimented with the combination of various kinds of scattered objects like flowers, grasses, tangled bushes and gaggles of geese rollicking and swimming in water. Despite that he had succeeded in such combination when creating The Hometown of Lu Xun, the imaginative artist, in face of different subjects, preferred to adopt different approaches with richer images to express them. Even though, Mountain Flowers and Field Chrysanthemums are both wild flower paintings they are substantially distinctive. One is scattered with dots of various size representing flowers and leaves with some lines inserted across them while the other comprises clusters and patches representing wild chrysanthemums in which flowers, leaves and branches are discriminated in light of shadow. A Reed Pond and Sparrows evidently dabble at experiments with freer approaches to controlling picture composition, which can find expression in the free and wild growth of branches and bushes, and houses arranged in different directions and of various size (for example, A Mountain Town Alongside the Yangtze River (1974), Qingdao (1975) and so on).

　　It is safe to say Wu Guanzhong’s individualized approach to the treatment of form matured in early 1970s. He had found approaches corresponding to his various artistic tendencies and his works during this period are the gleaning and refining of formal languages exhibited in western modern paintings and the combination of sensibilities, which have their roots in traditional Chinese paintings and oil painting materials. In this way, his goal of “Kite shall never desert its line” can be adhered to. His paintings of this nature include Pines and Rocks of the Lao Mountains (1975), A Mountain Village in the Lao Mountains (1975), A New House in the Lao Mountains(1975), The Yangtze River Bridge at Nanjing (1973), Households of Wuxi (1974), The Yangtze River in 1974 (1974), The Liu Garden of Suzhou (1974), The Wangshi Garden of Suzhou (1973) and A Garden of Suzhou (1974), among others. The attempts displayed in these works can be roughly divided into two categories, namely, continuous creation in traditional freehand brushwork in the form of oil painting and line-based depiction that attaches more importance to the relationship between lines of various kinds, which produce atmosphere and layering in space, etc. The former category can be represented by The Liu Garden of Suzhou, in which the rockeries and stone elephants near the lake are painted with large brush strokes and the branches of trees are drawn out rhythmically. The painting is comparable to large water-ink painting with freehand brushwork. If the viewer takes a careful look at those hill-perched stones briskly painted, the consummate oil painting techniques in graphic composition can be discerned. A New House in the Lao Mountains sets as its backdrop an expansion of mountain stones, which, together with pines, are painted based on approaches to traditional mountain-water paintings, hence their lines are “round and full” as well as arched in shape. The houses with gabled roofs in the center are painted very squarely with bricks, tiles and footstones drawn out with straight lines. On the right side of the foreground are large stones painted with square-tip oil painting brush stroke after stroke, so different facets and qualities can be discriminated. The large piece of footstone lying in the lower left corner is speckled with mosaic granites, like a large mottled tortoise lying in water, fantastically decorative. In this way, the center of gravity in the picture originally trisected changes, resulting in visual richness. From the perspective of graphic composition, the granite is placed where it is completely for the purpose of painting needs in that it does not seem to be in the “original scene” in terms of proportion or perspective. The very existence of the stone, however, immunizes the picture from mediocrity and chaotic composition and coordinates the forms of various parts of the picture, hence enriching it. It is like a seasoning agent, combining various ingredients into a delicious dish. Wu Guanzhong’s approach of “grafting one twig on another” is more than simply moving scenic objects elsewhere to a picture or piecing together scenic objects. Rather, it is about the change and re-creation in the process of “assembling” scenic objects. It is rational in artistic conception and graphic composition but, more importantly, “unexpected” in the match of forms because unexpectedness, as a rule, is acquired from rationality at a higher level. It is not a matter of whether realistic painting complies with principles of realism. Rather, it is a matter of whether realistic painting complies with visual laws and visual tastes, namely, an issue about the possibility of breaking through existing norms and establishing new artistic forms.

　　I would like to summarize his hardship-laden and delightful artistic career in light of his long-roll oil painting The Yangtze River in 1974 and a paragraph from his recollections:

　　…People love drifting through Three Gorges. They drift in and drift out. It takes just one day to drift through one-thousand-li of the river flowing through mountains. The artistic conception of Changjiang River is inherent in its current that incorporates interaction of forms and emotions…

　　Looking up from the rabble on the riverbank of the gorge, I’m lost in the cliff silhouette, strange stones and contours of riverbanks in Kuimen Gorge and Fengxiang Gorge…I climbed up Baidi Tower, looking down at the roaring current and tasting ranges of mountains in the distance. Despite a discrepancy in the laws of perpendicular visual perspective, I just want to forage for a different perception of the Three Gorges from different angles to come up with the image of them in my heart----Three Gorges and Hometown of Lu Xun--Recollection of Artistic Creation

　　Wu Guanzhong’s artistic practice is like his travels in the Three Gorges, foraging for ideal painting images and artistic forms to rest on and give vent to his emotions--In his perseverant pursuit of formal beauty in his artistic works, he answered a series of historical questions facing modern Chinese painting that intertwine and are related to the people’s understanding and evaluation of his art.Tolerant of these evaluations, he was completely cool and composed just like his compatibility with and containment of the richness and mottled nature of mountains and gorges exhibited from different angles. His rich experience in painting creation and elegant and trenchant artistic reviews have forged out a Three Gorges wonder in the history of Chinese modern fine art.