China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Master of ink
Li Keran’s brushwork dazzles at new exhibition in Beijing
Li Xiaoke, son of Li Keran and a painter himself, poses for a photo in front of a painting by his father that is on show at the National Museum of China. He (Li Keran) learned as much as he could. This is how he was able to elevate his art to a higher level as he grew older . ” Wang Mingming, director, Beijing Fine Art Academy
“Iam poor in time” and “I don’t have much left in my account of the bank of life” were what inkbrush master Li Keran (190789) was often heard saying during the last decade of his life.
The period was the most peaceful and busiest time Li had ever experienced. There were no more wars or chaos, no more hunger or forced relocations, to distract him from painting.
The period saw his creativity and imagination erupt. He devoted himself wholeheartedly to pushing the boundaries of Chinese ink-brush art. He produced many dynamic landscape works that dazzled people with their kaleidoscopic variations of ink that burst forth from his brushes.
It was also during this period that he founded the “Li school” of landscape painting. The group has grown into an assembly of younger painters who continue Li’s innovative spirit by developing his inkbrush traditions.
Sacred Land of Ink, an exhibition now running at the National Museum of China, celebrates the artistic glory of Li’s last 10 years with a showcase of 162 paintings and calligraphic works. It also marks the 110th anniversary of Li’s birth.
The works on show have been loaned by his family and collectors from both at home and abroad.
Li was one of the first three modern master artists, including Pan Tianshou (1897-1971) and Huang Zhou (1925-97), whose solo exhibitions ushered in the reopening of the National Museum of China in March 2011 after a four-yearlong renovation.
While the retrospective show held six years ago reviewed Li’s lifelong endeavors, the current exhibition focuses on how Li spent his latter years transforming the age-old art form into a more open and inclusive movement.
Wang Mingming, director of Beijing Fine Art Academy, says one reason why Li’s works were hailed as the new pinnacle for Chinese ink art is because he absorbed a great deal from tradition.
“He was enormously inspired by two great artists preceding him, Huang Binhong (1865-1955) and Qi Baishi (1864-1957). He didn’t repeat their techniques but rather, he studied how they found the keys to modernize the face of ink art while retaining the essence of tradition.”
Wang says Li insisted that a painter should be a keen observer of life and sketch a lot, which he himself lived up to. “He worked very hard. He learned as much as he could. This is how he was able to elevate his art to a higher level as he grew older.”
Li produced the works now on show at his 20-square-meter studio, famously known as Shi Niu Tang (“a room in tribute to cattle”). It was a room in his apartment in the west of Beijing where he moved to in 1973 and remained until his death in 1989.
Cattle was one of the main recurring subjects in Li’s oeuvre. Born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, he sought shelter in Chongqing in the 1940s, after the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) broke out. His home in the city was close to a cowshed. The bucolic scene of boys tending to cows reminded him of similar landscapes in his war-torn homeland in eastern China.
He painted cows out of a desire for peace and a strong attachment to the motherland. He hailed cattle as the incarnation of courage, persistence and diligence. Some of his paintings of cows are on display at the current exhibition at the National Museum of China.
Li Xiaoke, his son who is also a painter in his own right, says his father’s studio was simply furnished with sofas, desks and bookshelves but was packed with books, paintings and copybooks of calligraphy.
He says Shi Niu Tang meant more than a studio to his father, as it was “a battlefield” where Li Keran strove to map out a future for Chinese ink painting, as he daubed and layered ink on paper to create a thrilling world of light and shade.
“Father worked on his desk every day except for when he was ill. He rested only on the day of Chinese New Year.
“He would practice calligraphy after he was done with painting. He seldom turned down people who asked for his calligraphy inscriptions. He always had a full list of such commissions waiting to be completed.”
Wu Hongliang, a Beijingbased art critic and curator, says as contemporary Western art was introduced to the country in the 1980s, doubts lay over the future of Chinese ink painting. He says Shi Niu Tang bore witness to Li’s efforts to revive the vigor of ink-brush art as the two artistic cultures of East and West began to clash.
“He wrote down the renowned statement, ‘dong fang ji bai’, meaning that longstanding Chinese art would enter a new dawn of brilliance.”
Li Xiaoke says Shi Niu Tang also witnessed the last happy times for his father where he received friends from artistic and cultural circles, both from within China and abroad. Among them were Lu Yanshao (1909-93) the renowned Chinese painter, Kaii Higashiyama (1908-99), the Japanese writer and painter and Tsungdao Lee the Chinese-American physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
He says his father kept a low profile, and one of his few entertainments was listening to Peking Opera arias on an old radio in his studio.
And the studio was where Li Keran took his last breath, when he was struck down by a heart attack in the middle of a conversation with visitors on Dec 5, 1989.