The second phase of “The Dimension of Tradition – Copying and Collection for the National Traditional Painting by CAFA in the 1950s and 1960s” was an updated collection following the first exhibition of the same title which was launched by the Collection Department of CAFA Art Museum a year and a half ago.
From December 2015 to May 2016, the Collection Department of CAFA Art Museum has based on the school history of CAFA and its collections to offer an in-depth excavation and presentation of ideas of aesthetic logic and value. Thus what has been planned and implemented was the exhibition entitled “The Dimension of Tradition – Copying and Collection for the National Traditional Painting by CAFA in 1950s and 1960s”, which was regarded as an outstanding exhibition in the 2015 National Exhibition Season of the Excellent Collection from the Art Museums in China organized by the Ministry of Culture. It was also the fourth award-winning exhibition that the Collection Department of CAFA Art Museum collated and its collections were made use of to discuss the history and teaching of the National Beiping Art School and CAFA. The exhibition preface of the first phase has given an elaboration on the ideas and wishes of holding this exhibition. The original text is as follows:
The current intellectual and art circles all use their ways to express anxieties and thoughts about where they come from, who they are and what they should concern. “Tradition” has become one of the most frequent words used in discussions. How to recognize tradition and its value and fate, or more broadly speaking, how to think of the experience, success, and failure of our past to provide good references for dealing with present and future cultural opportunities and challenges? These questions are indispensable for any determined intellectual to think of related issues. Thus for CAFA who studied and practiced traditional national painting in the 1950s and 1960s after it was founded, it is very significant to sort and display related works and documents.
Each era has its dimension to understanding tradition, and the objects are representing tradition are also varied with different dimensions and focal points. Through the collation and analysis of the collections of CAFA Art Museum, it can be seen that in the political dimension, with the policies of “Art serves both the people and socialism” and “To promote the development of both the art and science” in the 1950s and 1960s, the selection of the art objects as tradition also revealed the requirements and characteristics of the era. Compared to the National Peiping Art School in the period of the Republic of China, CAFA dealt with art objects which are different from that of the past. In the past, the students of the National Peiping Art School studied national art traditions mainly based on literati paintings, and they copied the scroll paintings drawn by their teachers or the older generation. While the emerging CAFA students made efforts to take over the national art traditions from two aspects: one is “going out”, namely the teachers and students walked out of the campus and travelled to the basically-protected caves, palaces, temples, and graves, copying murals painted by ancient artisans as these works are “the artistic and spiritual wealth created by working people”. From 1935 CAFA started to implement “going out,” and it gradually became an important teaching content for the practice of various disciplines including Chinese painting, oil painting, printmaking, sculptures and art history. Many of the mural paintings copied by the teachers and students are currently preserved by the CAFA Art Museum and became powerful evidence to show how the teaching method “going out” engaged tradition in the 1950s and 1960s. We have selected a part of the collection for the audience to understand further where the CAFA teachers and students went to touch the national art traditions.
At the same time of “going out”, it was impressive that CAFA had the foresight and good taste to purchase more than 300 scroll paintings created in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties from galleries and markets of Beijing, in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a lower political pressure, which is the other aspect called “coming in”. It can be speculated from some clues in the documents that CAFA had the intention to display these purchased works for teaching. However, the idea was not truly fulfilled by the influence of the following Socialist Educational Movement and Chinese Cultural Revolution. It is believed that shortly, with the improvement of gallery space and teaching conditions, with the consensus of specific planning and implementation, these collections will be efficiently applied to the research and teaching under the systematical protection, rather than be placed in the storehouse, debuting for just one show.
“Going out” and “coming in” were the main ways for CAFA to adopt traditional ways of national painting in the 1950s and 1960s, and remained a valuable artistic heritage for the development of CAFA. It also established a premise for us to understand the dimension of traditional materials conditions of national art and its literati and artisans, which laid an academic foundation for us to re-discuss and reinterpret tradition. Therefore, we would like to express our gratitude to all the predecessors who helped to establish the foundation, and this exhibition is a tribute to them for their hard work.
Today, both the teachers and students of CAFA and all circles of the society have shown concern for the collections of traditional national painting. In order to respond to their expectations, CAFA Art Museum has planned to make full use of the gallery space and available dates to hold a series of exhibitions displaying the collections, and now comes the second round of “The Dimension of Tradition – Copying and Collection for the National Traditional Painting by CAFA in 1950s and 1960s”. In addition to the continuation of the existing display section of “going out” and “coming in” from the first phase, in the second phase, all the displayed collections of the first one are replaced. As it is difficult to present in the second phase, the remained collections from the same section of the first phase, only the well-preserved mural copies and scroll paintings are selected for the display, 28 pieces in total. Among them, mural copies of “going out” section feature more than ten works of the Maiji Mountain and Dunhuang finished by Ye Qianyu, Deng Bai, Wu Zuoren, Liu Lingcang, Lu Hongnian and other teachers in 1953 and 1954, including some famous mural paintings with several meters high. While the “coming in” section of ancient scroll paintings is not centered on well-known artists but it emphasizes the artistic characteristics and value of the collections themselves. It selected more than ten works of original scrolls of landscape, flowers, and characters drawn by well-known or little-known artists of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as a few fake copies of the famous painters that have artistic value and can be used as reference materials. Three-quarters of these scrolls were purchased from the antique shop, Baoguzhai and Xidan salesroom in the 1960s, and one quarter belongs in CAFA’s old collection.
It was the first time that CAFA Art Museum has implemented two exhibitions with the same theme from its scheduling collections, which was an innovation for researching the history of the collections of CAFA. Although it is an era that requires speed and stresses efficiency, people should take more time to understand the time-honored tradition of national culture and art, with regular exhibitions held and collections displayed by turns, which is beneficial not only to academic discussions, but also to modern artistic education and the confidence building of the national art. Hence, it welcomes the scholars and degree candidates for specialized research on the two phases of the collections.
The second phase of “The Dimension of Tradition – Copying and Collection for the National Traditional Painting by CAFA in the 1950s and 1960s” was an updated collection following the first exhibition of the same title which was launched by the Collection Department of CAFA Art Museum a year and a half ago.
From December 2015 to May 2016, the Collection Department of CAFA Art Museum has based on the school history of CAFA and its collections to offer an in-depth excavation and presentation of ideas of aesthetic logic and value. Thus what has been planned and implemented was the exhibition entitled “The Dimension of Tradition – Copying and Collection for the National Traditional Painting by CAFA in 1950s and 1960s”, which was regarded as an outstanding exhibition in the 2015 National Exhibition Season of the Excellent Collection from the Art Museums in China organized by the Ministry of Culture. It was also the fourth award-winning exhibition that the Collection Department of CAFA Art Museum collated and its collections were made use of to discuss the history and teaching of the National Beiping Art School and CAFA. The exhibition preface of the first phase has given an elaboration on the ideas and wishes of holding this exhibition. The original text is as follows:
The current intellectual and art circles all use their ways to express anxieties and thoughts about where they come from, who they are and what they should concern. “Tradition” has become one of the most frequent words used in discussions. How to recognize tradition and its value and fate, or more broadly speaking, how to think of the experience, success, and failure of our past to provide good references for dealing with present and future cultural opportunities and challenges? These questions are indispensable for any determined intellectual to think of related issues. Thus for CAFA who studied and practiced traditional national painting in the 1950s and 1960s after it was founded, it is very significant to sort and display related works and documents.
Each era has its dimension to understanding tradition, and the objects are representing tradition are also varied with different dimensions and focal points. Through the collation and analysis of the collections of CAFA Art Museum, it can be seen that in the political dimension, with the policies of “Art serves both the people and socialism” and “To promote the development of both the art and science” in the 1950s and 1960s, the selection of the art objects as tradition also revealed the requirements and characteristics of the era. Compared to the National Peiping Art School in the period of the Republic of China, CAFA dealt with art objects which are different from that of the past. In the past, the students of the National Peiping Art School studied national art traditions mainly based on literati paintings, and they copied the scroll paintings drawn by their teachers or the older generation. While the emerging CAFA students made efforts to take over the national art traditions from two aspects: one is “going out”, namely the teachers and students walked out of the campus and travelled to the basically-protected caves, palaces, temples, and graves, copying murals painted by ancient artisans as these works are “the artistic and spiritual wealth created by working people”. From 1935 CAFA started to implement “going out,” and it gradually became an important teaching content for the practice of various disciplines including Chinese painting, oil painting, printmaking, sculptures and art history. Many of the mural paintings copied by the teachers and students are currently preserved by the CAFA Art Museum and became powerful evidence to show how the teaching method “going out” engaged tradition in the 1950s and 1960s. We have selected a part of the collection for the audience to understand further where the CAFA teachers and students went to touch the national art traditions.
At the same time of “going out”, it was impressive that CAFA had the foresight and good taste to purchase more than 300 scroll paintings created in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties from galleries and markets of Beijing, in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a lower political pressure, which is the other aspect called “coming in”. It can be speculated from some clues in the documents that CAFA had the intention to display these purchased works for teaching. However, the idea was not truly fulfilled by the influence of the following Socialist Educational Movement and Chinese Cultural Revolution. It is believed that shortly, with the improvement of gallery space and teaching conditions, with the consensus of specific planning and implementation, these collections will be efficiently applied to the research and teaching under the systematical protection, rather than be placed in the storehouse, debuting for just one show.
“Going out” and “coming in” were the main ways for CAFA to adopt traditional ways of national painting in the 1950s and 1960s, and remained a valuable artistic heritage for the development of CAFA. It also established a premise for us to understand the dimension of traditional materials conditions of national art and its literati and artisans, which laid an academic foundation for us to re-discuss and reinterpret tradition. Therefore, we would like to express our gratitude to all the predecessors who helped to establish the foundation, and this exhibition is a tribute to them for their hard work.
Today, both the teachers and students of CAFA and all circles of the society have shown concern for the collections of traditional national painting. In order to respond to their expectations, CAFA Art Museum has planned to make full use of the gallery space and available dates to hold a series of exhibitions displaying the collections, and now comes the second round of “The Dimension of Tradition – Copying and Collection for the National Traditional Painting by CAFA in 1950s and 1960s”. In addition to the continuation of the existing display section of “going out” and “coming in” from the first phase, in the second phase, all the displayed collections of the first one are replaced. As it is difficult to present in the second phase, the remained collections from the same section of the first phase, only the well-preserved mural copies and scroll paintings are selected for the display, 28 pieces in total. Among them, mural copies of “going out” section feature more than ten works of the Maiji Mountain and Dunhuang finished by Ye Qianyu, Deng Bai, Wu Zuoren, Liu Lingcang, Lu Hongnian and other teachers in 1953 and 1954, including some famous mural paintings with several meters high. While the “coming in” section of ancient scroll paintings is not centered on well-known artists but it emphasizes the artistic characteristics and value of the collections themselves. It selected more than ten works of original scrolls of landscape, flowers, and characters drawn by well-known or little-known artists of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as a few fake copies of the famous painters that have artistic value and can be used as reference materials. Three-quarters of these scrolls were purchased from the antique shop, Baoguzhai and Xidan salesroom in the 1960s, and one quarter belongs in CAFA’s old collection.
It was the first time that CAFA Art Museum has implemented two exhibitions with the same theme from its scheduling collections, which was an innovation for researching the history of the collections of CAFA. Although it is an era that requires speed and stresses efficiency, people should take more time to understand the time-honored tradition of national culture and art, with regular exhibitions held and collections displayed by turns, which is beneficial not only to academic discussions, but also to modern artistic education and the confidence building of the national art. Hence, it welcomes the scholars and degree candidates for specialized research on the two phases of the collections.
