- The Beverly Arts
Artist Genhe Ding burns the edges of comic book pages from the Cultural Revolution era in China (1966 -1976) before placing on his canvas to create a mixed media art piece.
Genhe Ding is a professional artist, curator, and founder of the North American Artist Development Foundation. Genhe Ding was born in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China in 1971 and has a an education in fine arts and oil painting. Ding received his Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Hebei Normal University in China, and studied further at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Xu Beihong College of Art, Renmin University of China, and the Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University. He received a Master's degree in oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China, and studied under Professor John Walker of Boston University. He later opened his own paper mill and art school, while continuing his career as an artist.
"A Landscape with Comic Strips" - Genhe Ding
While he is trained in traditional oil painting and fine art, his style is contemporary and he likes work with composite materials that reflect his background and culture growing up in China. One of the materials he likes to incorporate are old comic books that were published during the Cultural Revolution and carry many childhood memories. In the history of China, Ding recalls that there were many times when people were forbidden to speak and burn books. The most famous time was the burning of books to bury scholars in the Qin Dynasty. This has inspired him to use fire in his work and is why he burns the edges of the comic book paper before gluing on to the canvas.
Chinese comic books that were published during the Cultural Revolution and were popular medium to entertain and educate people in China.
"Revolution and Counter-Revolution" - Genhe Ding
"Hawk and Pigeon Dance" - Genhe Ding
Another material he likes to use are Chinese couplets, the poems that are printed on red paper and black ink for the Spring Festival and are usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes or hanging as scrolls in an interior. In Chinese poetry, a couplet is a pair of lines that have a certain set of rules they abide by, and appear vertically on each side of the door. The tradition goes back to the Taoist ritual of hanging portraits of two large bearded and bushy eye-browed men on the eve of the Lunar New Year. The posting new couplets every year also has a sense of ritual and the accumulation of a culture. Chinese couplets appeared as early as the Qin Dynasty, over two thousand years ago, and the tradition continues today.
Chinese couplets and the portraits of two large bearded and bushy eye-browed men that are displayed during the Spring Festival and on the eve of the Lunar New Year.
"The Change of Couplets 4" - Genhe Ding
In regards to his other work, Ding is also an abstract painter who works in both oil and acrylic, and likes to use color and texture in his paintings. His colors tend to be bold and vibrant and he likes to use shapes and textures to express his art, sometimes in a geometric pattern. He also can be very timely with the subject matter he incorporates, such as in the painting "Virus Air" below, where he addresses the COVID-19 pandemic with an abstract of a person breathing and colorful particles of virus floating around in the air.
"Virus Air" - Genhe Ding
"2021 Separating Wall 4" - Genhe Ding
Genhe Ding's artwork has been exhibited throughout China and abroad, with many of his works in art museums and collected by individuals. His work has been exhibited at the National Art Museum of China, the China Military Museum, the Arts Museum of Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Arts Museum of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, the Renmin University Art Museum, the Shangshang Art Museum, the Hebei Art Museum,Taiwan, and in locations in the United States.
- The Beverly Arts
Updated: Apr 19, 2021
Author: Joey Zhou
Translated from Joey’s Chinese poem
Music: YouTube Link - https://youtu.be/RYzy8RMGaL0
This is a fictional love poem that is meant for mature audiences, and those who understand that most love poems are the result of lust. For example, in the well-known love poem, "When You Are Old", William Butler Yeats writes about his unswerving love for a woman, Ms. Maud Gonne, expressing his love for her beyond her external beauty, and lasting through the years of time. While their relationship didn't last, he wanted her to look ahead into old age, and feel the regret of not choosing him for the rest of her life. You see, "Someone loves your radiant youth, because they are deeply attracted by your beauty, and only one loves the painful wrinkles on your aging face."
Yeats was trapped by love most of his life, and while Maud would not marry him, he did succeed in life as a poet and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. In addition to this love poem I wrote, "The Narcissus Story", I also wrote another love poem called "Excuses" that has a similar tone - "When the excuse of death is life, I am your breath, and when the excuse of life is love, I am you."
How are you, dear Narcissus? !
How to say, riding a great dusty horse galloping gallop...
The lovely daffodils are lingering, go on!
Everything will pass...
He suddenly lost his IQ, but he could see through you and guess his mind.
Dear Narcissus, please continue to linger...!
In silence! There is no extra word, just like his verse:
"Not De Kooning's "Interlacing",
It's not Picasso's "Girl of Yanon";
It's actually painful, the pale yellow paint, and the orange on the palette.
Can you turn those suspicions and doubts into a thicker color?
"Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue, purple"
Lying in their own paint tube and sleeping peacefully,
Never disturb my mind;
How are you, dear Narcissus? !
He took up the paintbrush and smeared all the paint on his face,
He buried his face in the canvas again, tearing pain, he saw black and red, there are green mountains and green waters...
An abstract painting is about to be born...!
No, no, no,
What he wants is red with absolute black,
It's like the ornate of longing and longing.
How are you, dear Narcissus? !
No no, never once
Shed a drop of tears,
At least during the rainy season in Los Angeles...
No no, never once
Listened to music like this,
At least one person in the middle of the night...
He listened to Rachel’s Lullaby quietly,
Suppressing sadness in the quiet, graceful and quiet,
He asked the composer, who did you make the music for? The composer said she was a little girl, her name was Rachel.
Oh I got it! It turned out to be so clean and pure.
Still not a single teardrop slipped,
Only a few traces of faint sadness, his season?
Nothing like the past, I shed tears...!
He even laughed,
There is no particular pain in the empty chest.
How are you, dear Narcissus? !
Ride a horse to the lake, like the drowned prince in "Forget-me-not".
Not enough?
Then lay down on the ground like a Ragusos daffodil and die with self-pity...
Finally, you can come back to life with a smile, waiting for the expectation...!
That day, when he stood at the golden section on the stage facing the crowded audience, he completely recited the sad poem of the sad poet:
"When You Are Old"
And freeze the frame next time with the follow-up light! ! !
As if he saw his shadow...not dead.
And hum ha-ha in the polyphony of music..
Come on...
You can finally be calm.
How are you, dear Narcissus? !
On the way home that day, he continued to be handsome...
Take off the tie, shake the dust, kiss goodbye to the cheek of the elder sister photographer, and leave in a hurry...
He thought he could continue to be strong and no longer remember you,
Yes, he wants to completely erase you from the phone...
When the song "Tarzan of the Apes" sounded, how could there be waves of unknown pain in his chest?
"I will be here don’t you cry, I will be here don’t you cry."
The black female driver next to him hummed to the song over and over again...
"I will be here don’t you cry, I will be here don’t you cry."
She sang innocently, and every time she sang a word, a heart-wrenching pain appeared in his chest...
He still tried to smile at her, chatting with her on irrelevant topics,
In this way, the ripples of pain in the chest are alleviated...
It doesn't matter, everything will pass!
She said to him that day, let him not be afraid, and take him through the thorns to move on...
He admitted that he was more sensitive than her to see through all her thoughts,
So, I just waited for the time...
I remember that it was a certain day in March, and it was Pisces' birthday. He decided to remove her from the iPhone, thoroughly.
He thought he was a real man from now on.
Why the damn lyrics floated into his ears again,
Why did there be tingling ripples in his chest again,
It doesn't matter, everything will pass...
Only Rachel’s Lullaby sounded over and over again...!
How are you, dear Narcissus? !
Written on 03/10/2018 in Diamond Bar, California
- The Beverly Arts
Author: G. James Daichendt, Professor of Art History, Art Critic, and Dean of the Colleges at Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California
From his velvety electric landscapes to traditional Chinese ink paintings, Beijing-based artist Jiannan Huang (b. 1952) is no stranger to experimentation or bold use of color. Trained in traditional brush painting techniques, Huang uses that skill set as a foundation for an experimental approach to building landscapes that are closer to science fiction than reality. Huang’s devotion to nature on canvas becomes a sensory experience as he layers abstraction within these structured scenes that results in something closer to a memory or recollection of an important moment more so than a particular place.
A survey of Huang’s landscapes includes locations like deserts, mountains, rivers, and fields that could be located almost anywhere in the world. The consistent softness of the atmosphere and the effervescent haze that hangs over many of his works is reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s block-like forms floating above complementary colors that almost seem to push away from one another in a mystical fashion. This seemingly simple quality is enough to captivate the viewer and force them to consider these abstract qualities that build upon one another and combine to create a temper or tone in each image.
Cascade et rivière aux arbres, 2016
The painting Lac au Crépuscule, (Lake at Dusk) achieves depth through the layering of pigment that creates an illusion of distance. However, Huang’s background imagery is hardly concrete as shades of blue and orange mix to establish a horizon line that appears and disappears depending upon where the viewer focuses their attention. Sprinkled within the landscape are more refined organic plants and the presence of a few camels that give us a sense of proportion and some potential ideas about the locale of landscape. Yet the vague title and the slight hints of the region imply that there is more to this image than simply depicting a location. Instead, the colors fuse together and imply the sun’s closeness to the earth which is contrasted by the coolness of the lake and the low cloud cover that seems to limit our ability to see clearly.
Lac au Crépuscule, 2020
In contrast, the painting 梦中的歌谣 (Ballad in Dreams) reaches beyond realism and enters into fantasy as Huang’s forms become looser and more gestural. Here, the foreground resembles an abstract expressionist painting; as the landscape recedes, it is stylized with bold contour lines that capture pink cliffs and rocky, black mountains. These disparate styles are separated by a river that runs between these dramatically opposed styles as if acknowledging their differences. Focus on the painterly brush strokes reveals a lyrical quality, almost like a dance as the shapes fly around the bottom of the composition. It is a cosmic dance that pulls the viewer in through movement yet holds them at arm’s length with an abundance of energy that seems unstable. Beyond this combustible collection of elements, the landscape is otherworldly and reminiscent of the Surrealism movement and worlds one might find in a Salvador Dalí or Max Erst painting. A landscape from within, the framing elements of order are present, but the artist’s vision is clearly determining the details.
梦中的歌谣, 2020
Ink wash painting is one of the oldest forms of art making methods, utilizing shades of black to call attention to the spirit of the subject represented. In China, ink paintings have a regal tradition and are often compared with poetry for their careful use of line, form and handling of space. Many of the ideas found in traditional ink paintings were utilized within the American Arts & Crafts movement propagated by Arthur Wesley Dow and have become commonplace in basic art and design education in America. Significant among these concepts is the importance of combining line and color to create a harmonious composition. Calligraphy is a great example of a harmonious practice and uses the same black ink, but generally has a longer history than painting. It was only during the Song dynasty (960-1127) when painting and calligraphy became more closely aligned - a relationship continues in Huang’s work.
Huang’s calligraphy practice emphasizes the importance of text in the Chinese tradition. The seemingly abstract lines and forms in calligraphy are just a sample of the tens of thousands of Chinese characters in existence. These symbols convey much more than simple words and can include characteristics like energy or vitality. The simplicity of the brush coupled with complexity in the interpretation enables the dynamic meaning of 行书“上善若水”, where the calligraphy can be interpreted to mean “The highest good is like water, the earth’s condition is receptive devotion.” Within these carefully constructed symbols, brush strokes have an order, and each character has its own personality and myriad of meanings depending upon how the brush is used to make each mark.
行书“上善若水”, 2019
It’s no secret that the Abstract Expressionists of the mid-20th century revered Chinese calligraphy, an aspect of Huang’s education and professional work that can be seen when re-examining his landscapes. Just as artists like Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell embedded their emotions within their respective marks on canvas, Huang likewise infuses each stroke of paint with a great deal of history, symbology, and expression. Rather than thinking of his landscapes as representations of something real, it’s more appropriate to imagine the fleeting smell of tall grass or the humidity one feels on their skin as hot air is trapped within a wooded area. Far from academic renditions, these are fleeting senses that arise as Huang layers his paintings with an encyclopedia of forms and colors.
Given Jiannan Huang’s revere for calligraphy and his penchant for balanced compositions with a firm foundation, one can see how structure becomes very important in his work. As each symbol of calligraphy represents so much, Huang’s landscapes become a type of folklore that can be pulled apart line by line only to be combined once again for a fuller experience of the natural landscape. The combination of early styles of painting mixed with the artist’s concepts is reminiscent of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) and the emergence of mind landscapes, a style that mixed feelings with traditional techniques. From the dew hanging in the air above a lake to the crisp air flowing between the rocky ridges up in the atmosphere, the forces of nature rush forward in each landscape as they are built both internal and external forces. As Huang continues to cultivate an imagined world, he appears to long for an imagined retreat where all are invited.
G. James Daichendt is a professor of art history, art critic, and the author of several books including Robbie Conal (2020): Streetwise: 35 Years of Politically Charged Guerrilla Art; Kenny Scharf: In Absence of Myth (2016), and Shepard Fairey Inc. Artist/Professional/Vandal (2014). He holds degrees from Columbia, Harvard, and Boston universities and serves as Dean of the Colleges at Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, CA.