October 11th, 2012, the exhibition of" The Modern Road: Modern and Contemporary Oil Painting of Yunnan" opened at the National Art Museum of China. The exhibition has conducted a comprehensive combing of Yunnan contemporary oil painting, an overall presentation of the modernity and timeliness of Yunnan oil painting, which has confirmed the efforts of Yunnan artists in enriching the artistic vocabulary of China or even the world.
For the western, oil painting is a deeply rooted culture as well as an important symbol of the history of civilization. But for Yunnan, which lies in a tiny corner of southwestern China, oil painting as an exotic artistic form is a symbol of modernization, a road leading to modern times. In people's impression, Yunnan is a place with a beautiful natural environment but sterile cultural environment. But the fact is, over the one hundred years of China's social upheaval, Yunnan has been taking to the "Modern Road" in a particular way. It's just the strong original national flavor that has long overshadowed the modern cultural tendency of Yunnan. Yet Yunnan artists' explorations of "modern" never stopped since 1910, the first painter of Yunnan went to Japan to study western painting at his own expense which became the starting point of Yunnan modern oil painting. During the trendy 1985 and the mid-90s, the core of Yunnan’s oil painting was turned successfully to contemporary art with huge strides forward on the modern road. Nowadays, the modern "green value" in the artworks of the young artists after the 70s or 80s is worth the esteem of the whole era.
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"Modernity" has always been a crucial idea in Chinese contemporary art, here, we define it as a cultural perspective without a local cultural bias. "The modern road of Yunnan oil painting" represents how the oil painting-a western artistic form- took elements from Yunnan traditional folk art, combined with, and made use of the questions concerned by modernism, and then presented a way of modernism. Mao Xuhui, an oil painter, said that you could explore the starting point and turning point of Yunnan oil painting for the exhibition which made every effort to ensure the clarity and wholeness of the main clue to represent the transition of Yunnan contemporary art during the trendy 1985 and the mid-90s as well as to highlight the powerful force of the youth artists after the 80s. Although it's just a general clue, there are representative artists on every turning point and we highly value the persistence and continuity of the artists, this exhibition will be the new beginning for the research of Yunnan art history. Although the exhibition is about Yunnan oil painting, the whole cultural content is international instead of limited only to Yunnan. The exhibition informs the world that the culture of Yunnan is synchronous with modernization. The famous oil painter Tang Zhigang expressed that the exhibition is a promotion for the clues from modern art to contemporary art of the Yunnan, and then changes the obsolete impression of Yunnan as characterized by the “Ancient Tea Route" and national customs.
There are 59 representative oil paintings from 47 Yunnan painters in the exhibition with a long time span, abundant contents and various styles, which reflect the hardship of Yunnan oil painters in developing the modern road and present the modernity across geographical restrictions in their works. Among them, there are some famous masterpieces, such as the "Embankment in Summer", "Dawn of the Chestwood" by Liao Xinxue, "Market of Dehong", "Landscape of Dali" by Liu Ziming, "Fighting" and "Voice of Beijing" by Yao Zhonghua, "Ground for Burial·Red Armchair for Lying down", "Parents Sitting in the Night" by Mao Xuhui, "Simmons" by Tang Zhigang and so on.
During the exhibition, the academic seminar of "The Modern Road: Modern and Contemporary Oil Painting of Yunnan" was held at the National Art Museum of China on October 11th, 2012. Ten specially invited critics like Jia Fangzhou, Lu Hong, Wang Lin have had discussions around the issues of "Yunnan art in southwest of the southwest", "Contemporary oil painting of Yunnan" etc.
The exhibition will be at the National Art Museum of China util October 27, 2012.
