Liu Meizi's Artistic Evaluation

Wang Duanting, a researcher in China Academy of Art, Embrace Life with Publicity. As a young post-80s artist, Liu Meizi truly and accurately recorded the spiritual world and living conditions of her generation with a brush. They were born in 1980s after the reform and opening-up, and they are the first lucky generation in China for more than a century. They have neither suffered from war nor been destroyed by political movements. The rapid development of society and the increasingly affluent life provide them with good conditions for happy growth, and the era of reform and opening up and social environment have also created the same character of this generation, that is, "flaunting self-awareness, pursuing petty bourgeoisie lifestyle and advocating personal struggle." In contemporary painting circles in China, post-80s painters are becoming the most dynamic new force with their distinctive intergenerational characteristics. Different from the cynicism of post-60s artists and post-70s artists, post-80s artists enthusiastically embrace reality and actively pursue the future. Liu Meizi's "series of paintings of post-modern female painters' diaries" can be said to be a specimen of the artistic theme and creative style of post-80 s painters. Without the explanation of political meaning, the intention of moral education and the attempt of grand narrative, Liu Meizi turned her daily life into a happy drama for herself. In the paintings, she is her own actress and audience, and these works make us realize the poetry and beauty of ordinary life. Close-up portraits, flat shapes and simple pictures show that her paintings are influenced by the painting style of American pop artist alex katz (1927-). In the contemporary art world of China, where conceptual art is popular, Liu Meizi gave a brand-new interpretation of the concept of "turning life into art" through easel painting. Tao, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Art, saw plums in contemporary women for the first time. She is wearing an embroidered coat with a diagonal collar, a long lace skirt and embroidered shoes. Very chic, like a beautiful woman reappeared in the early years of the Republic of China. This plum, which combines elegance and fashion, is gentle, optimistic and cheerful. Her maverick and her real paintings complement each other. Although her works are painted with trivial and fragmentary private spaces, they have the leisure to read at home, elaborate grooming before going out, whispering conversations with dogs, lingering thoughts on Valentine's Day 2. 14, and telephone conversations with friends on March 8, 2008. It is these trivial things that haunt everyone's mind every day, but they are so pleasing to the eye, so affectionate and so warm that people feel the same. Her oil paintings are bright, pure, elegant and demure, full of elegant style and fashionable atmosphere, which is an intoxicating petty bourgeoisie sentiment. Her paintings do not pay attention to the delicate strokes and rich color changes in sketches. The picture composition with large color blocks and the simple structural modeling of people and objects are full of elegance and atmosphere. In her paintings, the duet of red and green, the echo of black and white, and the decorative colors of floral clothes, carpets and quilts inadvertently add vitality and beauty to the picture. From her paintings, we see a plum in daily life, a plum with rich inner world. She gave up her teaching career to pursue her artistic career. She can play the guqin with one hand and the piano skillfully. A young woman born in the 1980s can pick up the "Qinqi Calligraphy and Painting" of an ancient China literati to cultivate her self-cultivation. How many people can there be today? Plum blossom, a very personal art, can be said to be the representative and benchmark of "youth art" after 1980s. Commentator Yang Wei's Daily Aesthetics of Liu Meizi In the period of European classicism, painting was regarded as a very solemn thing. This is because it is inevitable for classicism to get rid of the shadow of medieval theology and trace back to the rational tradition of ancient Greece. So what we see is the humanistic scene depicted by classical paintings, and the solemn and elegant atmosphere is no less than that of medieval religious paintings. It can be said that classical painting is a transition from divinity to humanity, and the lofty feeling it creates for us has undoubtedly injected a sacred force into the transformation of secular society. Classicism takes the past style as a model, blindly pursues the eternal theme, and also forms a self-enclosed pyramid, which is completely out of touch with social life. As a result, classicism was replaced by romanticism with more humanity, and then modernism and postmodernism developed. Art history is actually such a history of self-liberation, and the change of style often stems from the awakening of people's subjective consciousness at different stages and degrees. In the post-modernism period, the emergence of contemporary art completely broke the boundaries of art and integrated with daily life. This is because with the continuous awakening of the subject consciousness, the secular spirit is getting stronger and stronger, so the traditional aesthetics collapses and then turns into everyone's concern for daily life. Liu Meizi lives in such a postmodern context. As a "post-80s" artist, Liu Meizi's growing environment has long lost its old collectivism atmosphere. With the introduction of market competition mechanism, China bid farewell to the planned economy completely and lost the social background of integration. The fragmentation and turbulence of reality make Liu Meizi full of doubts about "I don't believe" in the whole society (Beidao language), thus giving birth to a sense of alienation. It was at this time that painting became her gentle hometown and refuge. Tracing back to her painting history, we will find that the source of her painting style is inextricably linked with British American painter David Huo Nicole (1937 ~) and American pop artist alex katz (1927 ~). Huo's decorative painting style daily landscape seems calm and indifferent, but the bright color contrast makes the picture full of warm atmosphere; Alex katz depicts modern life with plane advertising pictures. Although the language is simple, it is elegant and quiet, giving people a distant poetry. All these are completely consistent with Liu Meizi's artistic pursuit, and also with her artistic ideal of taking painting as a comfort to the soul and hoping to give it warm and romantic cultural connotation. Therefore, in order to understand Liu Meizi's art, we can compare the works of Huo and Katz, or we can say that Liu Meizi's art itself is the inheritance and development of Huo and Katz. Of course, Liu Meizi has already come out from the influence of Huo and Katz, and formed her own artistic style by integrating their thoughts and language transformation. As for Liu Meizi's three kinds of works, namely, the nest series, the diary series of a postmodern female painter and the landscape series, there are at least two outstanding points, which are her artistic differences. First, she draws lessons from pop art, such as using loud colors in large quantities and emphasizing sharp color contrast. At the same time, depopulate the picture, that is, not taking the social popularity and cultural fashion of pop art as its own exploration direction, but taking her daily life as the keynote, injecting poetry into her unremarkable diet and daily life. It's like her work "Nest" series. Although the colors are bright, with traces of pop art, the language style is expressionism. Even the painting style of Italian painter giorgio morandi (1890 ~ 1964) is subtle, elegant, warm and romantic, thus interpreting her little nest as "gentleness" in spirit. Another example is her series "Diary of a Postmodern Female Painter's Life", which takes her eating and drinking life as the theme. Although trivial, she paused the plot and solidified it into a surreal picture, which also made it break the routine and filled with a quiet atmosphere ... Second, it was the unremarkable feature of Liu Meizi's art, as if she could create three series of works at the same time: Nest, Diary of a Postmodern Female Painter and Landscape. For Liu Meizi, painting never seems to have a fixed theme, but spontaneous, what you see in your eyes is what you get. Maybe outdoors, maybe indoors; Maybe it's a beautiful scene, but maybe it's a ruin ... in short, her paintings are like her mood diary. Wherever she goes, she will record it. Of course, this does not mean that Liu Meizi's paintings are aimless. In fact, the process of changing scenery is an aesthetic experience, but she makes this aesthetic experience daily. This is precisely the characteristic of Liu Meizi's art, that is, don't be blinded by the inherent aesthetic concept, but emphasize his own independent judgment, start from his own perception, find and capture those contents that are often overlooked in daily life, and give them aesthetic care and poetic imagination. Therefore, no matter how Liu Meizi's painting theme changes, we can smell a fresh breath and see a pure color from her picture. To sum up, it all stems from Liu Meizi's subjective consciousness, hoping to create a self-sufficient art world through painting. In fact, it has been since ancient times to build art into a self-sufficient world in the Peach Blossom Garden, especially the traditional "literati painting" in China, which depicts the landscape world as an ideal country. The reason why "literati painting" attaches importance to meaning and rhyme, but not to modeling, is because it is not to express the object, but to express its own feelings. This has a certain agreement with modern western art, but this self-discipline appeal of western painting is much later than that of China. There is another content later than China's, that is, the connection between art and life. It was not until the western postmodern art made this clear. China's "literati painting" takes "escaping from the pen without seeking form, chatting for self-entertainment" (in Ni Zan language) as its pursuit, and has long included the content of life in escaping from the chest and nourishing the spirit. Of course, I'm not saying that western art lags behind China, but I want to clarify that contemporary art in China is already facing two completely different cultural traditions. Fortunately, however, these two traditions are harmonious in today's post-modern background. Whether in China or in the West, contemporary art has extended the consciousness of exploration to social life. This undoubtedly cleared the cultural obstacles for Liu Meizi's creation, and made her art penetrate into daily life, which not only has the connection of traditional culture, but also has the contemporary connotation of broadening her horizons. From this perspective, Liu Meizi was born at the right time. Although the era she lived in was broken and incomplete. However, it is this broken reality that provides her with the freedom to wander in the cracks of life. It is the beauty of freedom that embodies this heartfelt desire, and Liu Meizi's art transcends the boredom of daily life and deeply touches us. 20 12.2.7 In Tongzhou, critic Cao's "Liu Meizi's Picture Diary" assumes that "postmodernism" is an established concept, and one of its main methodologies is often called "deconstruction": postmodernism must rely on the existing system (rather than replace the concept it questions), criticism is expressed from those criticized forms, and conventions and traditions are disintegrated internally. Then, our understanding of postmodernism is negative and destructive, and its meaning is derived from the process of dissolving meaning. It is a popular post-modern strategy to produce images by copying images, but Liu Meizi's painting is not to restore images, but to superimpose objects and texts. Her main creative ideas are contained in two most important series of works, Nest and Diary of a Postmodern Female Painter. Rooms, furniture, decorative items, private entertainment activities and quiet community landscape outside the window ... In short, what we learned is how a female artist decorated her life with the remnants of modern painting visual technology when she was dying. These paintings faithfully and quietly record all the trivial things in the painter's daily life with simple realistic techniques, elegant forms and bright colors. From the straightforward narration and graphic screen processing, it is difficult for us to perceive the true emotions and intentions of the creators. Such a peaceful and beautiful picture is not only as objective as "nature", but also a conscious expression of the artist's mood. It seems that for painters, all these popular images are enough to constitute all the conditions for artistic production. If we want to further investigate the causes of these works, we must restore them to the reality of the whole era and connect them with the changes of aesthetic tradition and the context of artistic trend of thought (pessimism and kitsch and the inheritance of traditional style patterns). As we all know, the influence of commercial factors on art is not only long-standing, but also deeply rooted. At the beginning of the new millennium, it is mainly reflected in the inevitable strong impact of popular culture. Popular culture advocates the elimination of elite "cultural consumption", which makes the artistic spirit worshipped in the past lose its mysterious, noble or pure color and move towards entertainment and investment activities in the public sense. An obvious example of erosion in the process of de-elitism-the most ingenious strategy in artistic creation in the 1980s and 1990s-has been relieved of the power of resistance and degenerated into irrelevant, negative and gentle humor. When confronting and suppressing, jokes are no longer regarded as a free attitude. In most cases, it has become synonymous with vulgarity, and even understood as some elegant fashion catering and recognition. "The reaction to the world with some irony and a little ridicule is now a cliche and thoughtless reaction; Judging from a method that may break the conventional thinking, it has been suspected to be an agreement to serve the establishment of accomplice relationship; It has changed from taking an attitude towards faith to shielding evil beliefs. " (Thomas Lawson, The Last Way Out: Painting) Although the creative career of avant-garde artists continues, just as we watch the works of political pop, gaudy art and cynicism produced today, it is difficult to perceive spiritual strength beyond exquisiteness and elegance. Like Robert. Hughes sighed, "Style, as the true reservation of experience, has become the cousin of commercial art: mode." (Andy. Warhol's Rise)-A powerful artistic trend of thought can only be learned from schema or technology. Since attitude expression has removed the ability to interfere with reality, art must survive and make its own voice; Faced with pressure and temptation, a new generation of artists will encounter doubts at the beginning of their careers: do they choose to depict the pessimistic tone of grandstanding or perform rebellion unrelated to the social value system? Judging from the decline of "Avant-garde spirit" and the stylization and patterning of avant-garde art, today's praise of "Avant-garde" is mostly extremely careless and irresponsible. It is not necessary to explore the material and choose the theme. Therefore, in Liu Meizi's The Nest and Diary of a Postmodern Female Painter, art can be a flat expression of daily feelings. Compared with the older generation of artists who are still immersed in the dream of "elite duty" and don't want to know, young rising stars actively weaken the romantic image and public personality of artists. They don't want to inherit the spirit of the avant-garde (criticism, contradiction and self-mockery) and the utopian consciousness of the group genre, nor do they deliberately avoid relying on the existing and highly conventional images obtained from the mass media. In the highly specialized urban culture, we can experience the unique numbness, calmness and mild indifference in the works of young painters. Loneliness and narcissism are the main spiritual characteristics of this generation. For the treatment of personal loneliness, painting is the most suitable psychological place. There is no need to deliberately hide the similarities between artists and other professional groups. Living in a chaotic, busy and calm era, there is no need to try to reveal the so-called spirit of the times. So, what is the life and creation of a "postmodern female painter" born after 1980s? Unlike some freelance artists who try to escape from public life and create in seclusion, Liu Meizi's studio is located in the center of the city, which can explain the lack of "avant-garde" enthusiasm and the added "professional" calmness in her works. The so-called "postmodernism" is just an illusory concept and a joke in the creation of most artists. Liu Meizi's works almost never use any strategies that are considered to be related to postmodernism, such as copying, extension and arbitrary imitation. From the avant-garde and cultural sense of artistic responsibility, she can be a feminist, aesthetician or technologist, but she is not a revolutionary. Of course, the younger generation of artists are generally unwilling to play the role of instigator of social ideology, and they are more willing to express their purely personal and irrelevant experience of the world through some less exclusive and more universal ways. Abandoning the ambition of interfering with the outside world, what remains is to restore artistic aesthetics to an "inward" gaze. If the theme of this era is mediocrity, self-paralysis, self-comfort, continuous repetition, day after day ... As a member of the social family, artists work gracefully and diligently on the screen, muttering lazy and comfortable daily fragments, whispering meaningless values and longing for the opportunity to sublimate in peace. There is no strong historical burden and cultural ambition, no mellow local complex, no pure spiritual pursuit; The proliferation of commercial image and popular culture, the isolation of social life, self is the reality of everything. In Liu Meizi's "Nest", the traditional concept of "home" gave way to the concept of room, and the objects of life that maintain personal feelings were also abstracted into monotonous symbols: sofa, chair, wardrobe, mirror, fruit ... The psychological echo of alienation was not produced by thinking about the theme of the work, but directly expressed by organizing and arranging images. In a closed painting world, Liu Meizi tried to marginalize the motive, theme or interest of the art system, ignoring the restriction of the relationship network between art itself and specific historical and social scenes, and tried to achieve "self-source" to avoid the double pollution from the traditional and current visual systems. Around the familiar things around us, artists provide texts and give the right of association and interpretation of works to the public at the right time. Viewers can choose, divide, rewrite, misread and produce the meaning of works according to their own experience system, interests, preferences and cultivation. Looking back on the artistic situation in the first ten years, the artistic ideal in the sociological sense at that time was not regarded as a daydream, and moderate "incomprehension" was a praise for radicalism, but today it is a dangerous signal to enter the market. The post-80s artists are the generation who actively and quickly participate in the vulgarization and secularization of artistic works. They try to play the role of "good children" in the whole social family, follow the cultural conventions and discourse order determined in life, and acquiesce in the diligence and customs of mainstream culture. However, the accusations from the society and the art world are still "inexperience, irresponsibility, ignorance, shallowness and self-centeredness". In fact, young artists are not only willing to follow the aesthetic principles of artistic creation, but also do not resist commercial artistic production. Just like the writing of Liu Meizi's Picture Diary, it is not only an elegant skill, but also a profession, a life and a pastime.