From July 2065438 to July 2009, my plane took off from Beijing International Airport, passed through Wan Li for more than seven hours, and finally landed breathlessly at Moscow Airport. In order to realize a dream I had hidden in my heart since I was a child, I searched for Mr. Lie Bin, the greatest painter in the 20th century, followed Lie Bin's footsteps, and learned about his creative style and artistic life.
This is the first time that I set foot on Russian soil, and it is also the first time that I stand in this place full of Lie Bin flavor and closest to Lie Bin. At this moment, I can imagine the excitement and can't describe it. Lie Bin was one of the two foreign painters in my childhood, and the second was French Miller. Fortunately, as soon as I settled down near the Red Square in Moscow, I received an unexpected surprise. Yong Chao, the little translator who accompanied me, told us that there happened to be a "Lie Bin Special Exhibition" in Moscow. The exhibits include almost all the classics of Lie Bin, and almost all the original works of Lie Bin seen in the domestic media are here. He stressed that this is the most comprehensive and grand exhibition held by this country for Lie Bin for the first time since the death of Lie Bin, which is really blessed by God.
I am so excited that I can even be said to be "ecstatic", because it not only makes up for my long-awaited teenage appeal for decades, but also gives me a golden key to my desire to find Lie Bin, and my mood seems to have reached the boiling point. In fact, if you wander the streets of Moscow, you will find that almost no one, male or female, does not know Lie Bin's name. Lie Bin is the pride of Russians and a business card of Russia.
The memory of the word "Russian" comes from my boyhood in 1960s, and all these memories are related to Lie Bin. I first met Lie Bin when I was eight or nine years old. I saw a color printing picture in my father's newspaper clippings. The author indicated below is Lie Bin. His oil painting named "Tracker on the Volga River" has a simple plot introduction, saying that Lie Bin was a great Russian critical realist painter from19th century to 20th century, and was the main representative of itinerant painting school. The story "The Tracker on the Volga River" truly reproduces the turbulent life reality of Russian society in the19th century. This aroused my childhood curiosity, but also aroused my great interest. Because the picture is very strange and heterogeneous, especially the characters' faces in the picture are foreign faces that we have never seen around our lives. Their clothes are completely different from those of China, and their painting methods are also different from those of domestic painters that were generally seen at that time. In fact, my memory of Russian artists and related works of art is not limited to these, except painting.
You may not have noticed that all the top writers, painters, musicians, thinkers and philosophers appeared with Lie Bin in the whole19th century, even in the early 20th century. As I grew older, I came into contact with more and more works and their authors, such as Turgenev, Chekhov, Pushkin and Gorky. Gorky's trilogy "Childhood", "The World" and "My University" fascinated me in particular. Another example is Tolstoy's War and Peace, Anna Karelina, ostrovsky's How Steel was Tempered, and the movies Lenin in October, Lenin in 19 18, etc., all of which have had an important influence on me. At that time, in the field of labor, we could even learn Lenin's standard movements in movies and release our acting talent to our classmates. During the break, we stood on the desk, waving our arms for a long time and reciting Gorky's Haiyan: "Let the storm come more violently." There are also dialogues in the film, such as "bread will be there, everything will be there", which is still fresh in my memory. In particular, we should not forget Paul Kazakin and Togna in How Steel was Tempered. When we think of the words on the title page of the book that have moved us deeply so far, we are all strengthened. "Life is a person's most precious thing, life belongs to him only once. A person's life should be spent like this: when he looks back, he will not regret his mediocrity and waste his time, nor will he feel guilty for his meanness and vulgarity. " The two protagonists are almost the positive and negative choice models of our life values in adolescence. We can either fight for life like Paul, or cheat the poor and love the rich like tonya, and do nothing with our heads down in the face of difficulties.
Nowadays, the historical changes from Russia to the Soviet Union, and then from the Soviet Union to Russia have not been transferred by human will. I believe that the historical reasons for this are by no means clear to a child around the age of 10. Today, people over the age of 50 should be a little clearer and have their own basic judgments. Time can change everything, but time can't change human thinking or the art created by human beings. Art always has a power to travel through time and space and shines in history.
Because it is close to the Red Square and the exhibition hall is not far away, it is only eight or nine minutes' walk, so I can't wait to stride into the exhibition hall, as anxious as a hungry wolf. The habit of finding familiar faces to satisfy curiosity was immediately verified in me, and I walked to the tracker on the Volga River "like no one's watching".
The size of the oil painting "Tracker on the Volga River" is not very large, but when these trackers with their feet on the horizon came to us in the dark, we felt as if we were living on the bank of the Volga River and stepping on the muddy sand, as if we heard their low moans and felt the cold wind blowing from behind the trackers. Seeing those people with different identities but the same fate, two figures particularly attracted my attention. The first unruly man with a pipe and a felt hat seemed to stare at all the audience inexplicably. His cold eyes and dismissive look back seem to be full of hostility to the world. There is also the painful expression of the child standing in the queue, strangled by a rope and helpless on his shoulders, shouting don't cry every day, which proves that he has dropped out of school; Those old people with dark skin and ragged clothes who walk in front of the team and can't get rid of their fate may be their final destination, and my heart is shaking. A person with a little social experience can find out the identity of every fiber-pulling figure in the tracker on the Volga River. Of course, this is not a probability of 100%, but a conceptual summary of life experience, and it is understandable to put it on a speechless work of art.
Let's go back to the boy with fair skin and standing in a group of grandparents and uncles, and continue to build a story about that boy through the arrangement of pictures. These trackers make some money by pulling optical fibers, and no one cares between the old and the young. They are struggling for their poor livelihood, which naturally makes us think about it when we are sympathetic and caring, so as to find the story of everyone in the picture and preset the ending for them. Perhaps, this skinny boy really can't stay in school to continue his studies. His family life is still good, and his father is the head of the family. However, because of alcoholism, his mother who lost family support was helpless, and he had to look after his young sister and other young children. The burden of life suddenly fell on the boy's shoulders. He may be fourteen, fifteen or sixteen. Between the huge ship and the immature children, our hearts are useless at all. The boy's body can't stand the blackmail of the string, but he wants to break free. He hooked the rope with his own hand to relieve the pain in his trunk. This classic psychological portrayal has undoubtedly become the finishing touch of the tracker on the Volga River.
Many of Lie Bin's works reflect social reality and human nature very seriously, especially the depiction of details, which often becomes the key to understanding his works, and the dramatic soul of his art is also reflected in these aspects. Lie Bin's characterization in real life and real life is obtained through in-depth experience and careful observation, which can be found in his works such as Tracker on the Volga River and Unexpected Return. It is said that Lie Bin's creation of The Tracker on the Volga River was inspired by a poem written by the famous Russian poet Necrasov. The poem reads: "Whose voice is ringing on the Volga River on the great Russian River? This sound is called singing here-the tracker is pulling the rope! In order to write "Tracker on the Volga River", Lie Bin actually lived on the dock of the Volga River with the coolies there for a summer. Lie Bin likes these "slaves like animals", and he thinks that wisdom, strength and heroism are truly reflected in these trackers. At that time, people, old people and children, who pulled fibers in their works and found prototypes in their lives, all came from the painter's life accumulation and sketching work. It is the original intention of Lie Bin and his travel artists to express real life and let people find their own life dimension in the scenes in the picture, so as to make a basic judgment on the times. Stasov said, "Look at Mr. Lie Bin's The Tracker! Then you have to admit at once that no one here dares to choose such a theme. You have never seen such an amazing and profound picture of Russian people's life, although this theme and topic have already appeared in front of us and our painters. "Lie Bin's most popular works are called trilogy, namely Tracker on the Volga River, Unexpected Return and Ivan the Terrible Killer. Since I'm here, the trilogy must be regarded as respect first. (To be continued)