Outstanding artists of all ages have noble knowledge and personality, and their demeanor, like water disappearing into the valley, nourishes the soil of China culture and art. Tian Liming said that what our ancestors dedicated and created is exactly what we want to carry forward. All this should not only be reasonable, but also be pragmatic. On the basis of teaching "Ordinary Things" and "Ordinary Heart", it is of far-reaching significance to review the vivid examples of the old gentleman in teaching and summarize the traditions of the older generation from the aspects of teaching, artistic practice and theoretical exposition.
Basic teaching is the lifeline of Chinese painting teaching. Without a good foundation, there will be no creation and inheritance. One of the biggest problems is what to teach students. How to teach? Where is the foothold? For example, Chinese painting teaching should emphasize tradition, and copying is an important part of learning tradition. How do you say plagiarism? Say what? The depth of the lecturer's own understanding of tradition is itself a problem. Therefore, teachers should first really infiltrate the spirit of traditional culture into their own blood, make themselves the disseminators of culture, and make students realize that tradition is alive. Talking about the teaching ideas of Li Keran, Ye, Ye, and Ye, it is introduced that all four teachers are tradition-oriented, based on the times, and put basic teaching first. In terms of teaching ideas, they each have their own emphasis. Li Keran emphasized that one should be on the road and the other should work hard, and laid a solid humanistic foundation for the teaching of landscape painting with his own artistic practice. Ye attaches great importance to the construction of teaching system and advocates that the reform of teaching and curriculum should be tested in the context of culture and times. He put forward that flowers, birds, landscapes and figures are the same as the training foundation, and advocated making efforts in literature, history, philosophy, calligraphy and seal cutting, and poetry cultivation, which broadened the basic teaching of Chinese painting and laid the basic teaching concept of the Chinese Painting College of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Guo Weiqu emphasized that the improvement of pen and ink should be put in cultural accomplishment and life practice. In basic teaching, he raised pen and ink to the aesthetic level for students to experience, emphasizing the integration of self-cultivation, life and creation; In meticulous figure painting, based on traditional aesthetic principles, Liu Lingcang emphasized understanding the mind with eyes and expressing the spirit with form. In basic teaching, he pays attention to painting as a kind of creation, emphasizes the transformation of objective and comfortable natural forms into artistic forms, and pays attention to the transfer of emotions.
The ancestors who explored hard in the tradition are the guardians and inheritors of the traditional cultural spirit and the creators of the spirit of the times. Tian Liming said that the thoughts of our ancestors were taught and embodied through concrete artistic practice and teaching practice. In Dan Mo Qing Yun, edited by Hong Liang, it is said that "learning from nature is an important traditional concept in Chinese painting teaching, and sketch teaching in the School of Chinese Painting of the Central Academy of Fine Arts is a feature of traditional teaching. How to integrate traditional things into sketch, how to integrate creative ideas into sketch and endow the times with humanistic atmosphere is an important tradition of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In the experience of real life, gentlemen transformed sketches into pen and ink language and artistic procedures rich in the traditional spirit of Chinese painting, leaving many classic works belonging to the times in their creation. Such as Li Keran's Shaoxing City, Lu Xun's Hometown, Ye's Red Silk Dance, Red Eyebrow Army's Salt-free Victory, and Pastoral Abundance. In teaching practice, gentlemen combine copying and sketching, and integrate the teaching concept of copying into sketching, which runs through the process of copying and sketching in their creation. The most important thing is their demonstration teaching. In the demonstration teaching, gentlemen decompose the creative process one by one, and the course draft is most suitable for students to copy and train. I can still feel their personality and demeanor conveyed in the teaching process of that year.