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Lot Essay
Breakthroughs of Realism in China
Since the late 1920s, artists and educators,led by Xu Beihong, provided education of Western Classical Realistic Arts to new generations in China. Realism in China went through numerous periods of transition. China's first two generations of oil painters, including Xu Beihong, Yan Wenliang, Wu Zuoren, Lu Shibai, established a deep foundation for oil painting in Chinese academies. From the 1950s onwards, this foundation was further brought into the service of Socialist Realism, a strict and ideology-laden academicism borrowed from the Soviet model. Beginning in the 1980s, this tradition was newly revitalized by artists seeking to instill the genre with Chinese cultural characteristics and a humanistic spirit.
Most of the third generation of realistic painters in China found fame during the 1980s as China entered into its current era of modernization and reform. While social structure diversified and evolved since China's Reform and Open Door Policy in 1978, Chinese Art was also quietly brewing a revolutionary change as receptive artists began to express their self-awareness and personal commentary in a burgeoning avant-garde. The reality of the political and cultural upheaval further heightened their interest in "truthful" and realistic social observation, allowing them to break new ground in the genre of realist paintings as it evolved into new forms, styles, and subjects.
Romantic Realism
Chen Yifei was a Shanghai artist, who lived in America, but an artist who refined and embraced his roots as he successfully introduced Chinese oil paintings to the western audience. Creating paintings that articulated rich emotions through the subjects Southern China landscapes or in the delicate language of portraiture, he was said to be a bridge of exchange for Western and Chinese culture in 1980s. In 1984, the New York Times and Art News coined the term "romantic realism" to describe the style of Chinese artist Chen Yifei, affirming the inner, emotional energy of Chen's works and its poignant effect in deeply moving the hearts of his audience.
The Musician Series adeptly reveals Chen's insight into the innermost world of people and his acute sensitivity towards the external environment. The success of his Musician Series comes from Chen's astute use of modeling, lighting and composition to guide the audience to observe and appreciate beyond their perceptive eye, sharpening their sensibilities to feel the harmony of music and to admire human ability to create beautiful things. As a result, these works reveal the core animus of Chen's art: his interest in creating a harmonious relationship between the "inner spirit" of his subjects and their external, material manifestation. This impulse, though rendered in a classically "Western"mode, demonstrates, too, Chen's unique reinterpretation of core Chinese aesthetic principles into a new medium.
Atmospheres of Enchantment
Chen Yifei fully utilizes light, an abstract and infectious element in oil painting, to express a poetic and enchanting atmosphere. The dark background in The Violinist (Lot 2021) and Opening Night (Lot 2022) intensifies Chen's meticulously-conceived lighting. The focused light highlights the facial features of the figure. Chen uses techniques in scrub painting to manipulate the figure's features, shoulders and arms to create a perception that the light is lightly radiating and scattering. William Blake, a representative figure of European Romanticism from the early 19th century, employed light to express emotions and feelings, creating affecting religious paintings such as Angels Rolling away the Stone from the Sepulcher (Fig 1). Works like these depict angels rolling away the stone of the tomb and removing the shroud for the resurrection of Jesus. In the darkness, the light penetrates through the bodies as if radiating from their core, producing a hazy and dreamy effect, filling this solemn religious subject matter with human sentiment. With the development in our scientific understanding of light and physics in the West, the use of light has been an important topic in oil painting learning as well. Chen Yifei was a pioneer in incorporated this western discourse into Chinese art and aesthetics, and his viewers are moved by his use of light, bringing them into to a picturesque universe.
Combining Classical and Modern Painting Skills
The Violinist and Opening Night are both produced with Chen's superb, signature techniques: the layering of rich colors with a matte finish; the black and shiny hair contrasted with fine, white flesh; sparkling eyes echoed by the figure's discreet jewels; the shimmering texture of the raw silk gown. As such, Chen's figures appear with a near three dimensionality, and the viewer is seduced by Chen's intentional emphasis on his figure's delicate features, brought out in a hyper-realist manner reminiscent to that of the photorealism of Gerhard Richter (Fig 2).
The portraiture genre conventionally accentuates the viewer's direct interaction with the depicted figure's facial expression, posture, and gaze. Chen cleverly re-works these conventions in his depiction of a female violinist in his Opening Night. In this work, the figure's features are glimpsed only partially and she averts our gaze, her mind consumed by her pre-performance preparation. To further enrich his poignant artistic vocabulary, Chen knowingly accentuates the body movement of the female musician, noting the body language of the classical Realism and the abstract concept of the modern Western art, echoing the aesthetic principles of Vassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich in restoring human bodies and things into points, lines and surfaces. Chen Yifei starts with drawing the profile. The left upper arm and the forearm gracefully form a right angle, while the violin forms a perpendicular shape relative to the floor. The figure's body forms a parallel shape with the violin, and the subdued dynamism of the composition lend themselves to the viewer's emotional engagement with the painting.
Chen's bold and theatrical choice of black as the background color of the painting helps us trace the roots of Chen's realism to the East as well as to the West (Fig 3). The theatrical effect of black is striking and dramatic, creating a space out of time symbolizing the transcendent qualities of beauty and harmony. The empty background can be linked to the "blanking" technique of the portrait in Song Dynasty. Chen replaces the "white" of Chinese ink painting by "black", forming a space for meditation. In contrast, in The Violinist, Chen paints a statue of The Virgin and the baby Jesus at the background to create an additional conceptual dialogue across time and cultures. The violinist, wearing a chic evening gown, is an imaginative contrast to Madonna and Child (Fig 4); The Virgin and baby Jesus painted in homochromatic tones become a sign of purity and benevolence, echoing the pursuit of eternal beauty and genuine affection found in the works of of Chen Yifei.
Since the late 1920s, artists and educators,led by Xu Beihong, provided education of Western Classical Realistic Arts to new generations in China. Realism in China went through numerous periods of transition. China's first two generations of oil painters, including Xu Beihong, Yan Wenliang, Wu Zuoren, Lu Shibai, established a deep foundation for oil painting in Chinese academies. From the 1950s onwards, this foundation was further brought into the service of Socialist Realism, a strict and ideology-laden academicism borrowed from the Soviet model. Beginning in the 1980s, this tradition was newly revitalized by artists seeking to instill the genre with Chinese cultural characteristics and a humanistic spirit.
Most of the third generation of realistic painters in China found fame during the 1980s as China entered into its current era of modernization and reform. While social structure diversified and evolved since China's Reform and Open Door Policy in 1978, Chinese Art was also quietly brewing a revolutionary change as receptive artists began to express their self-awareness and personal commentary in a burgeoning avant-garde. The reality of the political and cultural upheaval further heightened their interest in "truthful" and realistic social observation, allowing them to break new ground in the genre of realist paintings as it evolved into new forms, styles, and subjects.
Romantic Realism
Chen Yifei was a Shanghai artist, who lived in America, but an artist who refined and embraced his roots as he successfully introduced Chinese oil paintings to the western audience. Creating paintings that articulated rich emotions through the subjects Southern China landscapes or in the delicate language of portraiture, he was said to be a bridge of exchange for Western and Chinese culture in 1980s. In 1984, the New York Times and Art News coined the term "romantic realism" to describe the style of Chinese artist Chen Yifei, affirming the inner, emotional energy of Chen's works and its poignant effect in deeply moving the hearts of his audience.
The Musician Series adeptly reveals Chen's insight into the innermost world of people and his acute sensitivity towards the external environment. The success of his Musician Series comes from Chen's astute use of modeling, lighting and composition to guide the audience to observe and appreciate beyond their perceptive eye, sharpening their sensibilities to feel the harmony of music and to admire human ability to create beautiful things. As a result, these works reveal the core animus of Chen's art: his interest in creating a harmonious relationship between the "inner spirit" of his subjects and their external, material manifestation. This impulse, though rendered in a classically "Western"mode, demonstrates, too, Chen's unique reinterpretation of core Chinese aesthetic principles into a new medium.
Atmospheres of Enchantment
Chen Yifei fully utilizes light, an abstract and infectious element in oil painting, to express a poetic and enchanting atmosphere. The dark background in The Violinist (Lot 2021) and Opening Night (Lot 2022) intensifies Chen's meticulously-conceived lighting. The focused light highlights the facial features of the figure. Chen uses techniques in scrub painting to manipulate the figure's features, shoulders and arms to create a perception that the light is lightly radiating and scattering. William Blake, a representative figure of European Romanticism from the early 19th century, employed light to express emotions and feelings, creating affecting religious paintings such as Angels Rolling away the Stone from the Sepulcher (Fig 1). Works like these depict angels rolling away the stone of the tomb and removing the shroud for the resurrection of Jesus. In the darkness, the light penetrates through the bodies as if radiating from their core, producing a hazy and dreamy effect, filling this solemn religious subject matter with human sentiment. With the development in our scientific understanding of light and physics in the West, the use of light has been an important topic in oil painting learning as well. Chen Yifei was a pioneer in incorporated this western discourse into Chinese art and aesthetics, and his viewers are moved by his use of light, bringing them into to a picturesque universe.
Combining Classical and Modern Painting Skills
The Violinist and Opening Night are both produced with Chen's superb, signature techniques: the layering of rich colors with a matte finish; the black and shiny hair contrasted with fine, white flesh; sparkling eyes echoed by the figure's discreet jewels; the shimmering texture of the raw silk gown. As such, Chen's figures appear with a near three dimensionality, and the viewer is seduced by Chen's intentional emphasis on his figure's delicate features, brought out in a hyper-realist manner reminiscent to that of the photorealism of Gerhard Richter (Fig 2).
The portraiture genre conventionally accentuates the viewer's direct interaction with the depicted figure's facial expression, posture, and gaze. Chen cleverly re-works these conventions in his depiction of a female violinist in his Opening Night. In this work, the figure's features are glimpsed only partially and she averts our gaze, her mind consumed by her pre-performance preparation. To further enrich his poignant artistic vocabulary, Chen knowingly accentuates the body movement of the female musician, noting the body language of the classical Realism and the abstract concept of the modern Western art, echoing the aesthetic principles of Vassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich in restoring human bodies and things into points, lines and surfaces. Chen Yifei starts with drawing the profile. The left upper arm and the forearm gracefully form a right angle, while the violin forms a perpendicular shape relative to the floor. The figure's body forms a parallel shape with the violin, and the subdued dynamism of the composition lend themselves to the viewer's emotional engagement with the painting.
Chen's bold and theatrical choice of black as the background color of the painting helps us trace the roots of Chen's realism to the East as well as to the West (Fig 3). The theatrical effect of black is striking and dramatic, creating a space out of time symbolizing the transcendent qualities of beauty and harmony. The empty background can be linked to the "blanking" technique of the portrait in Song Dynasty. Chen replaces the "white" of Chinese ink painting by "black", forming a space for meditation. In contrast, in The Violinist, Chen paints a statue of The Virgin and the baby Jesus at the background to create an additional conceptual dialogue across time and cultures. The violinist, wearing a chic evening gown, is an imaginative contrast to Madonna and Child (Fig 4); The Virgin and baby Jesus painted in homochromatic tones become a sign of purity and benevolence, echoing the pursuit of eternal beauty and genuine affection found in the works of of Chen Yifei.