Xu Xi: The Confident Trudger in Art
Li Songtao
(Page 2 of 5)
Diligence and Chance |
SICHUAN--HANGZHOU, |
1940-1965 |
Xu Xi's ancestral home is in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, but he was born
in Chengdu, Sichuan Province and was primarily educated in Chongqing City as
his parents moved to Sichuan shortly after the Anti-Japanese War broke out. In
1951, the family moved again to Hangzhou, and he finished his primary
education in the nearby Yuhang County. It originated exactly from this kind of
nostalgia that Xu described the scenes of Shaoxing and Chongqing with strong
passion in many of his later works.
That Xu chose to be a painter is not the result of the family's influence but
that of the guide of his art teacher Yu Zhiqing, who admitted Xu into the
school's art group for his talent in art, when he was at Hangzhou Junior High
School. Although he was recommended for admission to the High School for his
excellent study, Xu, after graduation, decided to enter the Attached High School
of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. But his decision offended his father who did
not expect young Xu Xi to become an artist as the senior had witnessed the
unhappy experiences of artists of the old generation. Despite all this, Xu Xi
entered himself for the examination with borrowed money.
The Attached High School of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts was founded
in 1954, which aims at training students preparatory for advanced academies of
fine arts and general art workers and which has a strong and skillfully trained
faculty. The examiners for the school numbered over four thousand each year,
among which only forty would be admitted, Xu was admitted through such
difficult competition, due to his training at Hangzhou Junior High School
together with his own talent. Yet in the course of study, Xu found that he was
surpassed by many other classmates in the basic training before their admittance
to school. Thereafter young Xu Xi began to train himself with a sober analytical
view of the circumstance and his competitors, adjusting his own structure in
knowledge in order to turn what is unfavourable into favourable. He made great
efforts to train himself in water colour painting and drawing as well. He often
made sketches in water colour at the West Lake and did numerous copies of the
old masterpieces, and his works within the first two years were more than one
thousand. For the sake of improving sketching techniques, he even locked
himself with his classmate Liang Hongtao in the classroom and kept drawing
over the night. One summer he walked with other classmates along the
Fuchunjiang River to make sketches, passing the nights in the farmers' house or
on the farmers' threshing ground, and allayed their hunger with rice gruel and
pickles or boiled clams.
In the second year since Xu entered the school, the Anti-Rightist
Movement drove a few skillful and experienced professors and painters from
Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts to the Attached High School, which offered an
unexpected chance for the young students. The four years at school were
divided into two parts, with the first two arranged for basic training courses, and
the other for creativity practice. In his third year at school Xu was assigned with
the whole class to have their creativity course taken at Qishuyan Rolling Stock
Plant in Jiangsu Province. While labouring with the workers for several months,
they produced collectively more than 300 pictures depicting the Plant's history.
The pictures were later published as a picture-story book by Zhejiang Fine Arts
Publishing House. This activity helped Xu Xi to become more experienced in art
creation, and later his two other picture-story books, together with a few pieces
of posters, were also published by the Publishing House.
After more than 30 years, Xu Yongxiang, a former teacher at the Attached
High School, recalled that Xu Xi was then a "typically bright and talented
student". He and another classmate Wu Shanming, were good assistants to the
teachers as they showed extraordinary ability in organizing activities,
particularly when they were out to the countryside for practice with the whole
class. Though Xu was not among the best in study, he was very hardworking.
The success of Xu and many others of his former classmates in improving their
ability in art creation was largely due to their joint work in producing numerous
picture-story paintings.
In the 1950s and 1960s, as the social needs required, the New Year pictures,
picture-story books and posters in fashionable form were regarded as important
art categories, and were taken as courses at art academies. Quite a few painters
who are well known today joined in such production and they worked very
seriously. Their creativity played an important part in promoting the standards of
these categories. The picture-story books were not in the currently fashionable
form of four or six pieces of cartoon pictures, but they were serious art creations,
some of which could be appreciated as independent paintings. The picture-story
creativity would serve to train students to obtain the ability to have a
comprehensive observation and expression of objects, to have a good command
of the skills in painting from memory and to strengthen their sensibility in
catching the spirit of figures and the detail and vividness of surroundings. This
has proven itself to be a speedy and effective way to improve the ability in art
composition. Xu's training in picture-story production enabled him to easily
convert any complicated subjects into powerful images in his painting. Even in
his recent works there is the non-relaxed control in the seemingly freehanded
rendering of the almost abstract surface. Here, it is not difficult for us to discover
that this picture-story painter has a pair of sharp eyes for catching the
surroundings.
Before his graduation from the Attached High School, Xu Xi had a piece of
water colour selected to participate in a joint exhibition of the attached high
schools of China's art academies and one of the Soviet Union's. That is the first
time Xu had the chance to attend international art activities.
In the summer of 1960, he graduated from the Attached High School and
was recommended for admission to Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. Probably
because of his known ability in picture-story painting, he was allowed to study
at the Picture-Story and Poster Studio and transferred to the Print-Making
Department in the next year, majoring in wood-cutting and etching and
lithography as well.
The then Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts was, nationwide, one of the most
important institutes for print-making practice. There Xu Xi has been under the
instructions of Zhao Yannian, Zhao Zongzao, Cao Jianfeng, Shu Chuanxi and
others.
Xu Xi was fortunate that he was just in time for college when education was
the most undisturbed and effective before the Cultural Revolution. During the
period before, continuous political movements and overwhelming physical
labour and unpractical education nearly took the place of necessary classroom
instruction, the situation of which was adjusted to its normal way only after the
winter of 1960 when more attention began to be paid to the importance of
classroom instruction and the guiding role of teachers. The nationwide
liberalized atmosphere caused by the "Let hundreds of flowers blossom, and let
hundreds of schools of thought contend" policy led the Chinese art to a
climactic period in the early 1960s.
It is possible that Xu was not conscious of that rare chance, but he surely
made full use of the five years at college, which served as an important factor in
his later success in art. He tells in his autobiography,
"During my college period, I studied the works of such 'black-and-white'
masters as Germany's Kathe Kollwitz, France's Etienne Delaune, Italy's Bella,
Belgium's Francis Mercille, Norway's Edvard Munch, the Soviet Union's
Nekrasov and Venisky the Junior and more. I learned from different artists in
order to enrich myself. Even today I still often draw inspiration from what I
accumulated for art creation at college, which may be exemplified by the fact that
the way I depict a snow scene is a creation under the influence of Venisky the
Junior's series of World Travels" (2)
It was in his first year at college that Xu had his woodcut Militia on the
River reproduced in the People's Daily, which soon afterward appeared again in
other newspapers and pictorials. In the picture are randomly arranged boats in
which the fisher-militia are doing shooting practice. The formal composition and
proper rendering of black and white make it a really excellent work even in the
eyes of viewers today. The creation of this work was directly inspired by his
experience in Tangxi near Hangzhou where he was excited by
the scene of a boat loaded with loquat on the river illuminated by the setting sun
when looking down from an arched bridge at nightfall. It seemed that in all of a
sudden he found the key to the creation of the picture describing the militia then
still as an idea in his mind. He put three small boards into one piece on which his
first woodcut was soon finished. The picture shows the river as of several black
surfaces on which are scattered white boats. The distinct rendering of the theme
and the skills in cutting show that Xu already had the ability of a print-maker in
transforming the subjects into art in black and white. If he had been going
further along this way, he would have been a successful print-maker since he
was determined to be devoted to the world of black-and-white art while still at
college.
Years later, Xu Xi recalled his experience at the Attached High School and
the Academy, and said, "The training in water colour, sketching and picture-
story painting from memory at the Attached High School and my efforts made
on print-making at the Academy exerted a subtle influence on my creation in
Chinese painting."
(Page 2 of 5)