【評論】映紅地球的一片火焰
來源：《紐約時報》作者：馬修.艾德朗（美國亞洲博物館館長
車開出北京城近兩個小時，我們的司機不時要停下來找路。沿途經過許多新的開發區，有時還真不知道身在何處。也許對于我們來說并不為過，因為我們是去拜訪賈又福――當代世界上最為著名的畫家之一，而知道他的美國人卻為數不多。
我們沿著沒有路燈的公路駛入空曠陰冷、煙霧彌漫的郊外，除了高速上的白線到處一片黑暗，臨近住地，眼前驀然出現一處猶如迪斯尼樂園主題公園般的住宅區。社區入口是屹然高聳、明亮而華麗的大門，飛檐雕棟，朱紅的大門柱猶如現代的宏偉大殿，富有中國古典傳統色彩，神秘而莊嚴。門口警衛身著制服，佩帶半自動槍。
我問身邊的馬欣樂，這位賈先生的朋友和學生，常住上海的畫家，“警衛為何佩帶槍枝？”他說這是北京城區最早開發的高檔別墅社區，里面住有不少重要人物，包括某些國家領導人。接待的警衛笑容可拘，他與主人取得聯系后飛身騎上一輛摩托車，幫我們帶路，否則還真會身陷迷宮。園內多是磚石和大理石結構的歐式別墅，當我們一路駛過時路邊的保衛人員揮手致意。
賈又福的房子一片光亮，在房子右側的車道旁豎著白色帳蓬，里面停著一輛我從未見過的古怪車型，好象一輛高爾夫車但要復雜一些，上面有個白色汽球一樣的園頂子，站在旁邊的正是賈又福先生。
下車的時候，他的妻子上前迎接我們，還有衛衛，個頭高大的都博曼，一種德國的良種獵犬，她警覺地擋在賈先生身前，不停地向我這個“不速之客”發出警告，賈先生拍了拍它的身子，她就立刻變得溫順起來。
賈又福64歲，按中國的計算方法65歲。他是在一個具有連續三千年繪畫傳統國家里一個最為重要的畫家之一。他身著黑色的中式休閑裝，一頭銀發，神態沉穩自諾，謙遜而熱情。我們晚到了。馬欣樂是位畫壇的后起之秀，賈先生也期待這位年輕朋友的到來，談書論畫。身體的不適使他近年少于外出，但作為一名教書幾十載的老師，他善于教誨，且致致不倦。
曾有人告訴我賈先生的住宅是一座宏偉高大的五層樓宮殿，看來言傳不可信。他的室內舒適、寬暢、樸素而溫馨。我們隨賈先生來到他的畫室，并在藏畫室觀看了他的近年新作。幾十年來他一直在畫太行山。較早的作品還可以看出其中所描繪的地域性，如今升華到中國傳統繪畫中對神品、逸品層次的表現。他如癡如醉，情隨意流、使精神凌駕扵萬物之上，游刃扵創作的最佳境界。
自從九世紀大畫家蘇軾有“論畫以形似，見與兒童鄰”的高論、畫家的作品則著重于表現自我和天人合一。中國畫以表現大自然為契合點，并進一步發展為對于精神境界的表現，情境交融，通過修養的積累和智慧的超越從而達到精神的升華和藝術的升華。可以說賈又福是繼承和發展千年中華傳統繪畫藝術的最佳典范。
賈又福仍然是位傳統的山水畫家。在他展示那些手卷及掛軸時，他告訴我，他的筆意墨趣源自老師及畫界前輩大師，但又富有自己的創新，形成有自己獨特的風貌。他的恩師之一李可染先生曾告誡他要索取古人的繪畫精神，為己所用。“所要者魂，可貴者膽。”習古人但要有自我，這些近年新作奔騰有勢，凌跨群雄。他那具有沖擊力的雄勁筆力，別具一格的沉厚墨氣和不同凡響的畫面魄力，往往使有些人覺得他是否應歸屬于深受西方繪畫影響的新現代派畫家。
通過這些作品，我感到他的現代美學思想完全是在傳統筆墨的基礎上的體現和開拓，是他在20世紀和21世紀將中國傳統繪畫推向一個新的高度和層面，并對現代中國山水畫的創作產生了舉足輕重的影響。
幾十年來，太行山就象他心目中的宇宙，大不可及，深不可測。那些山民在他的作品中顯得遙遠而藐小，然而他們就像文中的省略號，在畫面中意深味長…….
他的繪畫是典型的筆墨之作。中國畫的意義遠遠要超越出表現自我精神和思想，陳述過去和現在，它是筆墨形式與內存精神的完美統一，給人的更高的精神享受。它又是探討的題材，而不僅是可以懸掛在墻上的飾物。你可以欣賞它，感知它，爭論它，它蘊藏著畫家的靈魂與情感，將人與自然的融合與精神揉為一體。
賈先生非常清楚，中國繪畫傳統要求“天人相合，心物相合，物物相合。”他心境浩淼，精神與天地往來。在他的作品中，要將這種溶合體現在每一個筆觸，每一筆都體現著他對這種溶合的理解，獨具匠心，就象歌唱家的聲音，是一種敘發，又是一種無法再現的永恒。
賈又福深入太行山四十余次，每次都有新的領悟和不同的收獲。“下筆之前，要胸有成竹，知道自己想要表現什么，也有的時候并非所愿，畫出來的不能盡然表達自己的思想和感受，或出乎意料，這會讓我更深一步地去探索，去尋求筆墨中的奧妙，遷想妙得，中得心源。”
在中國畫里，氣和韻的表現尤為主要。大自然、大世界、畫家本身都具備一種氣韻和精神，這些都應當在畫家的筆墨揮灑中得到體現，在書法的運筆過程中自然而然地滲化出來。故此中國畫的創作過程有時并不叫畫，而稱之為寫。
中國畫家在古代就懂的“豎劃三寸，當千仞之高；橫墨數尺，體百里之迥。”賈又福的畫有時篇幅不大，但所表現的題材巍然壯觀。墨筆經過他揮灑，山脈重巒疊嶂，如煙成靄，河谷逶迤綿延，如音棲弦、真是氣象萬千。有時一牙小月高懸天空，有時游離于山下或澗旁……對于他來說，月亮畫在地平線之上或以下。并不重要，重要的是將它畫在你心中認為重要而合理的地位。在他的作品中，天和水也許會上下倒置，抽象的筆墨就象在表現一種原始的、巨大的、沒有生命的歷史空間。在有些表現黃昏落日景象的作品中，橘黃和大紅的色彩橫掃畫面，就象映紅地球的一片火焰；有的時候，豐富多變的墨色表現了只有在安塞爾·亞當斯攝影作品中才體味到的玄奧、寂靜和神秘。對于他來說，創作是對已經逝去的一種意念的重新理解和表現。有時也需要和想法保持一定距離，不要太近，最重要的不是想法而是感情。他是用筆墨將自然情懷與人的精神氣度凝為一體，他的畫仿佛魂系大千世界，時醒時夢，撲朔迷離，贊頌著永恒的生命與不朽精神的神奇。
他指著一幅象是美國大峽谷的筆墨山水畫的一部分，其中的云和水也可以想像成天空，“看似云彩，又似氣和水，似有不同而又相同，就像生和死，陰和陽。畫重在心靈，以我的心靈更求古人的心靈，是天地間之真氣。”其蒼茫潤澤之氣，騰騰欲動，撼人心弦。在他的內心深處，他用自己獨特的繪畫語言建造了一個新的奧妙世界。
賈又福往往覺得力不從心，要畫的東西太多，要深入研究的東西太多。現在不能像從前一樣，時常深入山區，日行幾十里，他甚至不愿經常奔波于北京城區去他執教數十年的中央美術學院。60年代他曾經是那里的學生，如今博士研究生們來登門求教。
欣樂打開了他的一些花卉近作，賈先生詳細觀看每一幅作品，贊賞其畫作的精良墨筆和超俗的構圖，并指出了一些用筆上的缺欠與改進方法，并讓欣樂集中精力，不要選材太廣，這樣才能精益求精。欣樂堅實的傳統畫功底及良好的悟性使他感到欣慰和高興。
賈先生希望創作更多的作品，但并非易了。除了教授繪畫藝術，他的生命就是繪畫創作。衛衛又跑過來看我們，高興地依偎在主人的身邊，在沒有窗子的地下室她似乎覺的主人更加安全，也顯得輕松而隨和。她歡快地嗅一嗅每個人，也讓我嗅嗅她的鼻子。賈先生很高興看到她，也很高興和我們一起談論繪畫。
時至深夜，我們和賈又福，他的妻子還有衛衛一一惜別。司機穿過身著紅、金色相間制服的保安人員，輕松地開出了大門。開出好久也沒有遇到其它的車輛，外面也無路燈，墨黑的夜就象一頂斗篷籠罩著我們，巨大無比，然而我還是感覺到它并沒有像賈又福的畫那么巨大，那么深沉和雄偉。
馬欣樂譯自《紐約時報》美東新聞與文化生活導報《長船要聞》 2007年2月2日版
Fire on the Earth
by Matthew Edlund, Curator of Asian Art Museum of Sarasota
We’ve been driving for two hours beyond Beijing. The taxi driver frequently stops to find the way. There are so many new developments you can never be sure where we are. It seems appropriate as we try to find Jia Youfu, one of the most important artists in the world that Americans know nothing about.
We move across the unlit foothills into a dank, smoggy darkness, the only feature the white line of the road. When the gate of Jia’s complex appears, it appears like the opening to a theme park. The tall, bright, gaudy gate tower is topped by swaggering eaves , painted the vermillion colors of a modernized temple. But the guards’ military uniforms, and their submachine guns, are real.
I ask Ma Xinle, the Shanghai painter and friend of Jia, why the guns? There are important people living in this complex, one of the first high end suburban developments built in the Beijing foothills. Some are high party officials.
The guard’s smile is infectious. Putting away the submachine gun, he mounts a scooter to take us to Jia’s home, which we’d never find ourselves. The complex is filled with substantial brick and marble homes, parolled by guards in red livery and gold braid. They wave as we go by.
Jia’s house is well lighted. Curled on the side of the driveway is a white canopy. Beneath is a vehicle I have never seen, a cross between a smart car and a golf cart with a high white, balloon shaped top. Standing next to it is Jia. .
As we get out we are greeted by his wife, coming out of the house, and by Wei Wei, a tall Doberman who cannot stop barking. Wei Wei protectively moves in front of Jia, menacingly thrusting his muzzle, but turns friendly as Jia calms him.
Jia Youfu is 64, 65 by Chinese count. He is one of the most important painters in a country with a continuous 3,000 year tradition of painting, a tradition he sees himself a part of in every way. He is casually dressed in black, his hair all white. His manner is modest, welcoming, and sober. We are late. Ma is a rising painter, and Jia is looking forward to meeting a young friend and talking about painting. Heart disease prevents him from traveling very much, but as a teacher of many decades, he enjoys meeting the new generation.
I have been told Jia’s house is a palatial five story mansion. The rumor is wrong. The home is comfortable and spare, almost austere. We retire to the basement. Jia’s brings out paintings of recent years.
For forty years, he has painted the Taihang Mountains. At first you might have been able to tell some of locations, but quickly the paintings became what Chinese paintings normally are, landscapes of the mind. Ever since the great painter and statesman Su Shi nine hundred years ago that purely representational painting is for children, what matters is the painter’s expression. Chinese painting has used nature as the starting point, but then gone much further. The credo of the Abstract Expressionists would not have been so foreign to Chinese painters of the eleventh century.
Jia is a traditional painters. As he spreads out handscrolls and hanging scrolls, he tells me his brush ideas are those of his teachers and forebears, but his own technique is unique. One of his great teachers, Li Keran, told him that he must always learn from the spirit of the past, but have the bravery to make things his own. Jia is troubled that his powerful, innovative technique leads some to think him a Western style, contemporary painter.
For decades he has represented the Taihang mountains as a cosmos. People live there, but man is small to the point of near invisibility. Peasants have to walk four hours to get the wood they need for fires, he tells me, and carry it for four hours back down. Nature is high, wide, and deep, and harsh. Life in the Taihang mountains is hard.
“At first I painted the mountains, their spirit. Then I painted my feeling, my response to them. Now I think the two, my spirit and the spirit of the mountins, become one ,” Jia says.
The paintings are mostly brush and ink. Chinese paintings are more than expressions of individual spirit and thought, statements of the present and the past. They are also objects of discussion. You don’t just put paintings on the wall. You watch them, feel them, argue about them. When things get heated, you may try to talk to them.
Jia is well aware that the Chinese painting tradition requires that nature, man, the spirit of life be engaged through every stroke. Each brush stroke is an expression of the person making it, unique as a singing voice, both a permanent mark and a performance. Jia has been to the Taihang mountains more than 40 times. Each time is different. Each time he finds something else.
“Before I paint, I know in my mind what I will paint. Yet sometimes what comes out is not what I felt, not what I thought. This is a surprise. It lets me go deeper.”
In Chinese painting, qi, or spirit, is always present. There is the spirit of nature, of the world, of the painter. Each should live within the the writing of brush on ink. Coming from the strokes of calligraphy, which also started with the natural world, Chinese paintings are sometimes said to be written, not painted.
One ancient goal of Chinese painting was to express a thousand miles (li) in each foot of the painting. Jia’s paintings are sometimes small, but not his subject. Though using brush and ink, mountain ranges, rivers, and sky coalesce. Sometimes a tiny moon flies, below, beside, above the mountains. It doesn’t matter where the moon is, above the horizon, or below the earth, Jia tells me. It should just be where it belongs.
In his paintings, sky and water reverse places. Abstract lines of ink are physical fields recreating a planet which is primordial, vast, inhumanly monumental, unrelenting. Sometimes the red and orange of sunsets sweep like a fire on the earth, othertimes the many different colors of black ink form giant vistas which Ansel Adams could identify. Jia wants to paint a creative reinterpretation of ideas of the past, though not the ideas themselves. “You have to have a distance from ideas. Not too close. What’s most valuable is not the ideas, but the feeling.”
He points out part of a landscape that looks like an ink and brush Grand Canyon. Land and water could just as easily be sky. “It’s like clouds. They are air and water. Different, but the same. Like life and death.”
Death is not far away. I feel Jia’s pulse, the irregularly irregular beat of atrial fibrillation. As a Western doctor, I tell him there are different treatments for his condition. At one of the great artists of China, he is taken care of by top traditional doctors.
Jia doesn’t have the strength he’d like. It’s hard to get to the mountains now, almost impossible to climb them. It’s even arduous to get to Beijing, where he has long been a revered teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he himself was a student in the sixties. Now students come to him.
Ma unrolls some of his own scrolls. Jia discusses them, firm but critical, telling Ma to go deeper, to specialize in one topic like he did. He is more voluble now, smiling happily as he looks at Ma’s paintings.
Jia wants to paint more, but it’s hard. Painting is pretty much all he wants to do, except for teaching others about it.
Wei Wei rejoins us, happy to be with his master. In the windowless basement he is no longer so protective. He sniffs everyone happily, allowing me to sniff his nose in turn. Jia is enlivened to see him again, happier still to talk with Ma about painting.
It’s late in the night when we leave. We wave at Jia, Wei Wei, and his wife.
The driver finds his way past the brisking walking red and gold clad guards, and we signal the well armed sentries at the gate.
For a long time there are no others cars, no lights. The inky black night falls over us like a cold cloak. The night is vast. Yet somehow the night doesn’t feel as big as Jia’s paintings.
來源：《紐約時報》作者：馬修.艾德朗（美國亞洲博物館館長
車開出北京城近兩個小時，我們的司機不時要停下來找路。沿途經過許多新的開發區，有時還真不知道身在何處。也許對于我們來說并不為過，因為我們是去拜訪賈又福――當代世界上最為著名的畫家之一，而知道他的美國人卻為數不多。
我們沿著沒有路燈的公路駛入空曠陰冷、煙霧彌漫的郊外，除了高速上的白線到處一片黑暗，臨近住地，眼前驀然出現一處猶如迪斯尼樂園主題公園般的住宅區。社區入口是屹然高聳、明亮而華麗的大門，飛檐雕棟，朱紅的大門柱猶如現代的宏偉大殿，富有中國古典傳統色彩，神秘而莊嚴。門口警衛身著制服，佩帶半自動槍。
我問身邊的馬欣樂，這位賈先生的朋友和學生，常住上海的畫家，“警衛為何佩帶槍枝？”他說這是北京城區最早開發的高檔別墅社區，里面住有不少重要人物，包括某些國家領導人。接待的警衛笑容可拘，他與主人取得聯系后飛身騎上一輛摩托車，幫我們帶路，否則還真會身陷迷宮。園內多是磚石和大理石結構的歐式別墅，當我們一路駛過時路邊的保衛人員揮手致意。
賈又福的房子一片光亮，在房子右側的車道旁豎著白色帳蓬，里面停著一輛我從未見過的古怪車型，好象一輛高爾夫車但要復雜一些，上面有個白色汽球一樣的園頂子，站在旁邊的正是賈又福先生。
下車的時候，他的妻子上前迎接我們，還有衛衛，個頭高大的都博曼，一種德國的良種獵犬，她警覺地擋在賈先生身前，不停地向我這個“不速之客”發出警告，賈先生拍了拍它的身子，她就立刻變得溫順起來。
賈又福64歲，按中國的計算方法65歲。他是在一個具有連續三千年繪畫傳統國家里一個最為重要的畫家之一。他身著黑色的中式休閑裝，一頭銀發，神態沉穩自諾，謙遜而熱情。我們晚到了。馬欣樂是位畫壇的后起之秀，賈先生也期待這位年輕朋友的到來，談書論畫。身體的不適使他近年少于外出，但作為一名教書幾十載的老師，他善于教誨，且致致不倦。
曾有人告訴我賈先生的住宅是一座宏偉高大的五層樓宮殿，看來言傳不可信。他的室內舒適、寬暢、樸素而溫馨。我們隨賈先生來到他的畫室，并在藏畫室觀看了他的近年新作。幾十年來他一直在畫太行山。較早的作品還可以看出其中所描繪的地域性，如今升華到中國傳統繪畫中對神品、逸品層次的表現。他如癡如醉，情隨意流、使精神凌駕扵萬物之上，游刃扵創作的最佳境界。
自從九世紀大畫家蘇軾有“論畫以形似，見與兒童鄰”的高論、畫家的作品則著重于表現自我和天人合一。中國畫以表現大自然為契合點，并進一步發展為對于精神境界的表現，情境交融，通過修養的積累和智慧的超越從而達到精神的升華和藝術的升華。可以說賈又福是繼承和發展千年中華傳統繪畫藝術的最佳典范。
賈又福仍然是位傳統的山水畫家。在他展示那些手卷及掛軸時，他告訴我，他的筆意墨趣源自老師及畫界前輩大師，但又富有自己的創新，形成有自己獨特的風貌。他的恩師之一李可染先生曾告誡他要索取古人的繪畫精神，為己所用。“所要者魂，可貴者膽。”習古人但要有自我，這些近年新作奔騰有勢，凌跨群雄。他那具有沖擊力的雄勁筆力，別具一格的沉厚墨氣和不同凡響的畫面魄力，往往使有些人覺得他是否應歸屬于深受西方繪畫影響的新現代派畫家。
通過這些作品，我感到他的現代美學思想完全是在傳統筆墨的基礎上的體現和開拓，是他在20世紀和21世紀將中國傳統繪畫推向一個新的高度和層面，并對現代中國山水畫的創作產生了舉足輕重的影響。
幾十年來，太行山就象他心目中的宇宙，大不可及，深不可測。那些山民在他的作品中顯得遙遠而藐小，然而他們就像文中的省略號，在畫面中意深味長…….
他的繪畫是典型的筆墨之作。中國畫的意義遠遠要超越出表現自我精神和思想，陳述過去和現在，它是筆墨形式與內存精神的完美統一，給人的更高的精神享受。它又是探討的題材，而不僅是可以懸掛在墻上的飾物。你可以欣賞它，感知它，爭論它，它蘊藏著畫家的靈魂與情感，將人與自然的融合與精神揉為一體。
賈先生非常清楚，中國繪畫傳統要求“天人相合，心物相合，物物相合。”他心境浩淼，精神與天地往來。在他的作品中，要將這種溶合體現在每一個筆觸，每一筆都體現著他對這種溶合的理解，獨具匠心，就象歌唱家的聲音，是一種敘發，又是一種無法再現的永恒。
賈又福深入太行山四十余次，每次都有新的領悟和不同的收獲。“下筆之前，要胸有成竹，知道自己想要表現什么，也有的時候并非所愿，畫出來的不能盡然表達自己的思想和感受，或出乎意料，這會讓我更深一步地去探索，去尋求筆墨中的奧妙，遷想妙得，中得心源。”
在中國畫里，氣和韻的表現尤為主要。大自然、大世界、畫家本身都具備一種氣韻和精神，這些都應當在畫家的筆墨揮灑中得到體現，在書法的運筆過程中自然而然地滲化出來。故此中國畫的創作過程有時并不叫畫，而稱之為寫。
中國畫家在古代就懂的“豎劃三寸，當千仞之高；橫墨數尺，體百里之迥。”賈又福的畫有時篇幅不大，但所表現的題材巍然壯觀。墨筆經過他揮灑，山脈重巒疊嶂，如煙成靄，河谷逶迤綿延，如音棲弦、真是氣象萬千。有時一牙小月高懸天空，有時游離于山下或澗旁……對于他來說，月亮畫在地平線之上或以下。并不重要，重要的是將它畫在你心中認為重要而合理的地位。在他的作品中，天和水也許會上下倒置，抽象的筆墨就象在表現一種原始的、巨大的、沒有生命的歷史空間。在有些表現黃昏落日景象的作品中，橘黃和大紅的色彩橫掃畫面，就象映紅地球的一片火焰；有的時候，豐富多變的墨色表現了只有在安塞爾·亞當斯攝影作品中才體味到的玄奧、寂靜和神秘。對于他來說，創作是對已經逝去的一種意念的重新理解和表現。有時也需要和想法保持一定距離，不要太近，最重要的不是想法而是感情。他是用筆墨將自然情懷與人的精神氣度凝為一體，他的畫仿佛魂系大千世界，時醒時夢，撲朔迷離，贊頌著永恒的生命與不朽精神的神奇。
他指著一幅象是美國大峽谷的筆墨山水畫的一部分，其中的云和水也可以想像成天空，“看似云彩，又似氣和水，似有不同而又相同，就像生和死，陰和陽。畫重在心靈，以我的心靈更求古人的心靈，是天地間之真氣。”其蒼茫潤澤之氣，騰騰欲動，撼人心弦。在他的內心深處，他用自己獨特的繪畫語言建造了一個新的奧妙世界。
賈又福往往覺得力不從心，要畫的東西太多，要深入研究的東西太多。現在不能像從前一樣，時常深入山區，日行幾十里，他甚至不愿經常奔波于北京城區去他執教數十年的中央美術學院。60年代他曾經是那里的學生，如今博士研究生們來登門求教。
欣樂打開了他的一些花卉近作，賈先生詳細觀看每一幅作品，贊賞其畫作的精良墨筆和超俗的構圖，并指出了一些用筆上的缺欠與改進方法，并讓欣樂集中精力，不要選材太廣，這樣才能精益求精。欣樂堅實的傳統畫功底及良好的悟性使他感到欣慰和高興。
賈先生希望創作更多的作品，但并非易了。除了教授繪畫藝術，他的生命就是繪畫創作。衛衛又跑過來看我們，高興地依偎在主人的身邊，在沒有窗子的地下室她似乎覺的主人更加安全，也顯得輕松而隨和。她歡快地嗅一嗅每個人，也讓我嗅嗅她的鼻子。賈先生很高興看到她，也很高興和我們一起談論繪畫。
時至深夜，我們和賈又福，他的妻子還有衛衛一一惜別。司機穿過身著紅、金色相間制服的保安人員，輕松地開出了大門。開出好久也沒有遇到其它的車輛，外面也無路燈，墨黑的夜就象一頂斗篷籠罩著我們，巨大無比，然而我還是感覺到它并沒有像賈又福的畫那么巨大，那么深沉和雄偉。
馬欣樂譯自《紐約時報》美東新聞與文化生活導報《長船要聞》 2007年2月2日版
Fire on the Earth
by Matthew Edlund, Curator of Asian Art Museum of Sarasota
We’ve been driving for two hours beyond Beijing. The taxi driver frequently stops to find the way. There are so many new developments you can never be sure where we are. It seems appropriate as we try to find Jia Youfu, one of the most important artists in the world that Americans know nothing about.
We move across the unlit foothills into a dank, smoggy darkness, the only feature the white line of the road. When the gate of Jia’s complex appears, it appears like the opening to a theme park. The tall, bright, gaudy gate tower is topped by swaggering eaves , painted the vermillion colors of a modernized temple. But the guards’ military uniforms, and their submachine guns, are real.
I ask Ma Xinle, the Shanghai painter and friend of Jia, why the guns? There are important people living in this complex, one of the first high end suburban developments built in the Beijing foothills. Some are high party officials.
The guard’s smile is infectious. Putting away the submachine gun, he mounts a scooter to take us to Jia’s home, which we’d never find ourselves. The complex is filled with substantial brick and marble homes, parolled by guards in red livery and gold braid. They wave as we go by.
Jia’s house is well lighted. Curled on the side of the driveway is a white canopy. Beneath is a vehicle I have never seen, a cross between a smart car and a golf cart with a high white, balloon shaped top. Standing next to it is Jia. .
As we get out we are greeted by his wife, coming out of the house, and by Wei Wei, a tall Doberman who cannot stop barking. Wei Wei protectively moves in front of Jia, menacingly thrusting his muzzle, but turns friendly as Jia calms him.
Jia Youfu is 64, 65 by Chinese count. He is one of the most important painters in a country with a continuous 3,000 year tradition of painting, a tradition he sees himself a part of in every way. He is casually dressed in black, his hair all white. His manner is modest, welcoming, and sober. We are late. Ma is a rising painter, and Jia is looking forward to meeting a young friend and talking about painting. Heart disease prevents him from traveling very much, but as a teacher of many decades, he enjoys meeting the new generation.
I have been told Jia’s house is a palatial five story mansion. The rumor is wrong. The home is comfortable and spare, almost austere. We retire to the basement. Jia’s brings out paintings of recent years.
For forty years, he has painted the Taihang Mountains. At first you might have been able to tell some of locations, but quickly the paintings became what Chinese paintings normally are, landscapes of the mind. Ever since the great painter and statesman Su Shi nine hundred years ago that purely representational painting is for children, what matters is the painter’s expression. Chinese painting has used nature as the starting point, but then gone much further. The credo of the Abstract Expressionists would not have been so foreign to Chinese painters of the eleventh century.
Jia is a traditional painters. As he spreads out handscrolls and hanging scrolls, he tells me his brush ideas are those of his teachers and forebears, but his own technique is unique. One of his great teachers, Li Keran, told him that he must always learn from the spirit of the past, but have the bravery to make things his own. Jia is troubled that his powerful, innovative technique leads some to think him a Western style, contemporary painter.
For decades he has represented the Taihang mountains as a cosmos. People live there, but man is small to the point of near invisibility. Peasants have to walk four hours to get the wood they need for fires, he tells me, and carry it for four hours back down. Nature is high, wide, and deep, and harsh. Life in the Taihang mountains is hard.
“At first I painted the mountains, their spirit. Then I painted my feeling, my response to them. Now I think the two, my spirit and the spirit of the mountins, become one ,” Jia says.
The paintings are mostly brush and ink. Chinese paintings are more than expressions of individual spirit and thought, statements of the present and the past. They are also objects of discussion. You don’t just put paintings on the wall. You watch them, feel them, argue about them. When things get heated, you may try to talk to them.
Jia is well aware that the Chinese painting tradition requires that nature, man, the spirit of life be engaged through every stroke. Each brush stroke is an expression of the person making it, unique as a singing voice, both a permanent mark and a performance. Jia has been to the Taihang mountains more than 40 times. Each time is different. Each time he finds something else.
“Before I paint, I know in my mind what I will paint. Yet sometimes what comes out is not what I felt, not what I thought. This is a surprise. It lets me go deeper.”
In Chinese painting, qi, or spirit, is always present. There is the spirit of nature, of the world, of the painter. Each should live within the the writing of brush on ink. Coming from the strokes of calligraphy, which also started with the natural world, Chinese paintings are sometimes said to be written, not painted.
One ancient goal of Chinese painting was to express a thousand miles (li) in each foot of the painting. Jia’s paintings are sometimes small, but not his subject. Though using brush and ink, mountain ranges, rivers, and sky coalesce. Sometimes a tiny moon flies, below, beside, above the mountains. It doesn’t matter where the moon is, above the horizon, or below the earth, Jia tells me. It should just be where it belongs.
In his paintings, sky and water reverse places. Abstract lines of ink are physical fields recreating a planet which is primordial, vast, inhumanly monumental, unrelenting. Sometimes the red and orange of sunsets sweep like a fire on the earth, othertimes the many different colors of black ink form giant vistas which Ansel Adams could identify. Jia wants to paint a creative reinterpretation of ideas of the past, though not the ideas themselves. “You have to have a distance from ideas. Not too close. What’s most valuable is not the ideas, but the feeling.”
He points out part of a landscape that looks like an ink and brush Grand Canyon. Land and water could just as easily be sky. “It’s like clouds. They are air and water. Different, but the same. Like life and death.”
Death is not far away. I feel Jia’s pulse, the irregularly irregular beat of atrial fibrillation. As a Western doctor, I tell him there are different treatments for his condition. At one of the great artists of China, he is taken care of by top traditional doctors.
Jia doesn’t have the strength he’d like. It’s hard to get to the mountains now, almost impossible to climb them. It’s even arduous to get to Beijing, where he has long been a revered teacher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he himself was a student in the sixties. Now students come to him.
Ma unrolls some of his own scrolls. Jia discusses them, firm but critical, telling Ma to go deeper, to specialize in one topic like he did. He is more voluble now, smiling happily as he looks at Ma’s paintings.
Jia wants to paint more, but it’s hard. Painting is pretty much all he wants to do, except for teaching others about it.
Wei Wei rejoins us, happy to be with his master. In the windowless basement he is no longer so protective. He sniffs everyone happily, allowing me to sniff his nose in turn. Jia is enlivened to see him again, happier still to talk with Ma about painting.
It’s late in the night when we leave. We wave at Jia, Wei Wei, and his wife.
The driver finds his way past the brisking walking red and gold clad guards, and we signal the well armed sentries at the gate.
For a long time there are no others cars, no lights. The inky black night falls over us like a cold cloak. The night is vast. Yet somehow the night doesn’t feel as big as Jia’s paintings.
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