Naked truths

Chen Danqing is in the news for a solo show of his oil paintings and his attacks on the state of art education in the country. Zhu Linyong reports

The organizers of Chen Danqing's major solo show were apparently taken by surprise when about 600 viewers swarmed into the Exhibition Hall of Oil Painting Academy of China, in an eastern Beijing suburb on Oct 31. Admirers of the 57-year-old oil painter, writer and outspoken public figure, from all walks of life, threw the opening into chaos as they hogged the microphone, asking him questions unrelated to the exhibition.

But Chen was unruffled, answering with ease and humor.

In the end, the renowned painter said: "Over the past 10 years, I have been attacking the education system. I will keep doing this in the coming years."

These remarks met with cheers and applause from the crowd.

Chen frequently grabs public attention for his acerbic remarks on a range of issues. Liu Bingsheng / For China Daily

Chen frequently grabs public attention for his acerbic remarks on a range of issues. Liu Bingsheng / For China Daily

"Wherever he shows up and speaks, he gets a big audience. But the difference is, Chen's words have substance."

The exhibition, running until Dec 1, presents more than 100 of Chen's works from the past decade, since he returned to China. They comprise landscape sketches, realistic portrayals of art students, coal miners, peasants, and nudes, and his conceptual paintings in which he copies ancient Chinese calligraphy and paintings and classical European masterpieces.

"The display reveals the artistry and diligence of a gifted artist who not only paints and teaches, but also assumes the role of a public intellectual," says Yang Feiyun, curator of the exhibition and dean of the Oil Painting Academy of China.

Over the past two decades, Chen has frequently grabbed public attention for his acerbic remarks on a range of topics.

After living in New York as a professional painter for 19 years, Chen came back in 2000 and accepted an offer from Tsinghua University, to serve as doctoral advisor at the school's Academy of Arts and Design.

But Chen said later that his resentment with the bureaucracy at the school and university grew with each day.

Chen handpicked five students from a large number of candidates who, he believed, had artistic talent.

He taught them painting, only to find none of them were able to graduate because they all failed the final exam in English.

Chen lambasted the decision declaring that English proficiency was a completely meaningless requirement.

His decision to quit Tsinghua University in 2005 sparked a heated debate over the state of art education in the country.

Portrait of a young lady by Chen Danqing, in 2010.

Portrait of a young lady by Chen Danqing, in 2010.

He has urged the country's publicly funded art museums to serve the people instead of a handful of artists.

He has expressed dismay at the disappearance of old residential areas and historical buildings in his home city of Shanghai and in the Chinese capital.

And he has cautioned his contemporaries, who were appointed to the official Contemporary Art Academy of China in 2009, not to lose sight of their art.

However, Chen has managed to churn out new works, winning widespread critical acclaim. They include oil copies of ancient Chinese paintings and his depictions of eminent intellectuals such as Cai Yuanpei and Chen Yinque in 1920s China.

"In my paintings, I have a candid dialogue with myself. The painting process helps keep my mind sober," he says.

A self-taught oil artist, Chen spent his adolescent years briefly in Shanghai, before being dispatched to the rural areas for a decade to be re-educated.

He grew into one of the most influential artists in the country only with China's reform and opening-up.

He enrolled in the Central Academy of Fine Arts for his post-graduation despite the fact that he had no professional training in oil art and held only a junior high school diploma.

His Painting Series on Tibet, created in the early 1980s, won him instant fame and positioned him as an influential figure in the early days of China's contemporary art history.

The series was hailed as a breakthrough, heralding a break from the socialist realism paintings that dominated the 1960s and 70s.

Along with other pioneering artists such as Luo Zhongli, He Duoling, and Meng Luding, Chen contributed to a new wave in China's art scene.

The country's oil painters began borrowing from European traditions in the 1980s and were influenced by artists such as Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Vincent van Gogh. Previously, they followed the style of former Soviet Union artists.

Chen's travels abroad in the 1990s further broadened his horizons.