Three Essays on Ma Guoqiang's Art
The characteristics of Mr. Ma Guoqiang's paintings can be summarized as six-character uprightness, boldness and clarity of style.
Those with a straight body have clear lines of inheritance and innovation, simple and bold lines, elegant and harmonious ink, steady and full compositions, clear and sincere expressions, which can be said to be Confucian and dignified; those with strong spirit, calligraphy With the brush, the five strokes and the seven inks are interlocking, powerful and vigorous, and full of internal power; the clear frame, the overall picture has a transcendent air curling slowly, like a wisp, as delicate as the first moon rising to the horizon, and as cool as the sound of the deep spring. Shi Feng. Mr. Ma Guoqiang worked tirelessly. With one hand, he followed Ren Bonian, and with the other hand, he closely followed the pulse of the times. He combined tradition and reality. He took the essence and used macro, blending form and spirit. His style suddenly changed, and he suddenly created his own brand that was different from his predecessors. style. The beauty of his imagery, realm and brushwork presents his unique artistic personality, making him unique in today's painting world.
1. The main characteristic of Ma Guoqiang’s art is to calmly draw materials from the fiery real life in order to express the grand purpose of “portraying thousands of grassroots workers”.
In Mr. Ma Guoqiang's writings, there is no preconceptions that are far-fetched to annotate existing concepts, and there is no inexplicable fear of being in Lushan and not being able to distinguish between east and west, but there is real touching and in-depth thinking. There is a gaze on the hardships of labor, a sincere admiration for a sunny smile, persistence in difficulties, calmness in vicissitudes, and a grasp of the voice of the times and an interpretation of the true meaning of life.
Mr. Ma Guoqiang's writings generally fall into three categories: ethnic minority characters, poetic characters in ancient costumes, and grassroots workers in the Central Plains. For a long time, these three types of expression objects have been intertwined among painters, and each has its own advantages in art.
Mr. Ma Guoqiang chose "grassroots workers of the Great Plains in the 21st century" as his main focus, which is also impressive for his keen artistic insight. In this regard, a number of new realist works, represented by "Builders (Migrant Workers)", have emerged with great force. In this large work depicting dozens of characters, the painter created a brand-new character image and artistic conception of brushwork. Although there are wind, rain, frost, snow, depression and worries in reality, the group atmosphere they create in the pictures has a beautiful and lyrical artistic conception, which is fresh, cheerful, unrestrained, heroic, optimistic and persevering. This is a typical spiritual outlook of the people of the Great Plains, simple yet courageous, tolerant yet cheerful. The painter fully depicts and perfectly displays this touching group temperament with delicate and unrestrained brushstrokes. It not only has a strong realistic appeal, but also has artistic value that cannot be ignored.
Second, striving to uphold the spirit of Chinese pen and ink on the basis of solid realism is another major characteristic of Mr. Ma Guoqiang’s art. What is extraordinary about Mr. Ma Guoqiang is that he cultivates "techniques" hard but is by no means addicted to it and cannot extricate himself. He clearly realized that realism is a means rather than an end. The introduction of Western realism has undoubtedly broken the distortion and shackles of traditional ink painting programs on life with empty concepts. However, the core essence of traditional Chinese painting is the freehand brushwork and the grasp of the spirit of the universe based on concrete depictions. Without this, it will inevitably fall into " The jade wheel is in the vertebral wheel, and the palace is easily carved into the quagmire of the acupoint. Based on this, when creating his ink and wash figure paintings, he always pays attention to grasping the overall situation of the form, strictly positioning the key points, appropriately placing the non-key parts, exaggerating and omitting, taking realism as the basis and taking into account freehand brushwork, integrating richness into conciseness, eliminating complexity to organize, and pleasing to the eye. The eyes can appreciate the heart again.
With crisp brushwork, bright images, concise composition, the rich ink happily spreads away with the strokes of the center, bringing dryness and smoothness, expelling the richness from the dryness, fresh and romantic. , virtuality and reality coexist, constructing an aesthetic system that is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. These creative imprints with strong personalization are the guideposts for the spirit of Chinese pen and ink to reach Mr. Ma Guoqiang's artistic heart.
Third, he is unique in the use of lines and achieves a breakthrough in the unity of modeling and writing. This is the third artistic concerto of Mr. Ma Guoqiang.
The most basic starting point of Chinese painting or calligraphy is line, and the smallest component is also a line. Chinese painting is distinguished from Western painting by the shape of the line with the interest of calligraphy. Chinese painting, a world structured by lines, embraces the cultural characteristics of a variety of art types and is formed by the organized and regular superposition of lines, dots, horizontal, vertical, slanting, pressing, turning, etc. When wiping the brush, the lines seem to be broken and connected, the air is lingering in the invisible place, and the energy and veins are connected in the non-brush place. Some are beautiful and smooth, some are clever and dense, or some are natural and vertical. Most of them form their own pattern.