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Artist captures spirit of Forbidden City
By Zhu Linyong (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-09 06:31 Early experiences
However, it has taken Jiang decades of hard work to capture ancient Chinese
royal court life by applying the Western fine art techniques.
"Jiang's success is a rare example," Manfred Schoeni, owner of Hong
Kong-based Schoeni Gallery and a big fan of Jiang's oil works, had once said.
"It was only after unremitting efforts and countless setbacks that he managed to
step foot on the road to success."
In 1951, Jiang was born in a carpenter's family in Huoshan Village, Jinxian
County, in South China's Jiangxi Province. He is the fourth child among eight
siblings. When he was three, his family moved to provincial capital Nanchang,
where Jiang developed a keen interest in art at an early age.
"My family members have never expected me to become an artist," recalled
Jiang, who grew up in a family which had no ties whatsoever with art, yet made a
name for himself in painting while still young.
Jiang received incomplete and basic training in art from his neighbours and
middle school teachers during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).
At 16, Jiang, a junior high dropout, was enlisted in the army and spent four
years in South China's Fujian Province before working for a local motor
manufacturing factory in Nanchang.
During that period, Jiang continued to learn about painting.
In 1974, he was enrolled in the Central Academy of Fine Arts where he was
exposed to different genres of both Chinese and Western art. But Jiang's
favourite was the art of oil painting.
In 1988, Jiang graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and started
teaching there before he was transferred to the Central Academy of Drama to be a
professor, embarking on his road of professional painting.
Obsession with imperial palace
The reason Jiang was preoccupied in creating works on the Forbidden City
might be attributed to the year 1974, when he came to Beijing and saw with his
own eyes the Forbidden City for the first time in his life.
Once he stepped inside the Forbidden City, he was spellbound by its
magnificent view and couldn't help wondering what kind of people once lived
there.
This is the prime driving force that pushed him to study the imperial culture
and life, Jiang said.
"My love of the traditional culture naturally breeds an artistic urge to
pursue the oil painting art of the Forbidden City," Jiang said. "The Forbidden
City often haunts me in my dreams," Jiang said.
"The Forbidden City is an epitome of brilliant Chinese civilization. As a
country with more than 2,000 years of feudal history, the imperial culture
spearheaded the development of the Chinese civilization."
In 1405, Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty moved the capital of the feudal
Chinese empire from East China's Nanjing to Beijing; two years later, between
1407 and 1420, began the building of this monumental palace that ended up
becoming a small city, consisting of 9,000-odd halls, and covering an area of at
least 5 square kilometres.
The complex, constructed and reconstructed by the feudal
dynasties only a few hundreds years ago, is a perfect embodiment of
millennia-old ancient Chinese civilization and Chinese culture, Jiang said.
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