當今我國的繪畫創作，不論題材內容還是形式語言，均愈來愈顯示出多元和多樣的面貌。題材內容的不斷擴大和形式語言的不斷拓展，都基於藝術家對自己獨立人格的自覺和對自我藝術個性的自信，表明他們藝術視野的開闊和修養的提高。從另一個角度看，也反映社會的開放和進步，人們的審美需求的寬度與深度在增長，藝術家們的視覺經驗和表現手段也相應地日益豐富。例如，在近十多年的中國畫山水畫和油畫風景畫的創作中，除了表現祖國美好山河和田園風光外，出現了不少新的題材內容，突出的有中國畫領域的“城市山水”和油畫創作中的“城市風景”、“工業風景”等。我們這裡討論的張新權君，便是在“城市風景”和“工業風景”的創作中有傑出成就的油畫家。
張新權1983年畢業于曲阜師範大學美術系，後深造于中國美術學院油畫研究班。他最初以表現自然風景、追求田園詩意的作品步入畫壇，但在這些農村的寫生作品中，卻不時出現一些工業産品如摩托車、油桶和汽車瓶等，傳達出畫家內心對現代工業文明關注的資訊。稍後，他這方面的視野又有所擴大，漁船碼頭、工廠的一角、拖拉機等圖像，陸續出現在他的風景畫中。假如，這一切還是出於他潛意識偏好的話，那麼，2002年他的一幅上海外灘風景油畫《十里洋場》，于翌年參加在中國美術館舉辦的“第三屆中國油畫展精選作品展”獲得成功後，他對表現與工業發展有關的城市景觀題材的興趣，便日益濃厚了。頗有意思的是，早在二十年前，即上世紀80年代初，張新權便創作了一批描寫上海萬國建築群的鋼筆速寫。《十里洋場》的創作，算是一種偶然的機會，但是卻成了他藝術歷程的轉捩點。他曾説：“對我而言，《十里洋場》的出現或許是一個里程碑，它分割了我的過去和未來，修正了我的探尋和格局；對城市景觀，尤其是工業化對人的生活和情感帶來的變化，我更感興趣。”
張新權的另一幅以舊上海城市風景為題材的《信號臺》2004年獲得“第十屆全國美術作品展”銅獎並被中國美術館收藏之後，他再一次受到鼓舞，也鞏固了他對未來藝術走向的自覺性。描寫舊上海景觀的《河道》、《海灘》、《風雲十六鋪》、《碼頭》、《有軌電車》、《十字街頭》和《黃浦江畔》等作品在2005至2006年的出現，便充分説明這一點。久違了的上海街道上的有軌電車、早己停用的蒸汽輪船……這些中國開始走向工業化的象徵，出現在他的作品中。工業化伴隨著列強對中國的欺淩和壓迫來到華夏大地，打亂了這裡農業文明的“安定”與“平靜”，也催動了國人的覺醒和振奮了國人的精神。這是中國近現代史上兼有悲傷、心酸與興奮、欣喜的一個片斷，也是中國社會前進中無法繞開的一段路程。用藝術形象語言呈現這段歷史，絕不是為了滿足人們對它的好奇心，而是讓人們感受中國開始走向現代的社會圖像，引發人們對中國歷史的思考和從中獲得應有的思想啟迪。
對藝術創作來説，山水畫或風景畫的創作當然以表現祖國山河的力與美為主旨，但的題材應該不斷拓展，形式語言也應該不斷地變化。把那些繫動著人們思想感情的歷史和現實景觀納入在藝術表現的範圍之中，並選用與其相適應的繪畫語言，從而賦予現代風景創作以多樣的面貌，這也是山水、風景畫創新的應有之義。在藝術領域，人們的視覺經驗和欣賞心理既有相對的恒定性，又有不斷求新求異的驅動力。藝術家的創造需要在恒定性與求異兩者之間尋找適度的平衡，做出創新的努力。而藝術家在求異求新中如何找到恰當的切入點，則需要藝術家對自己的個性、氣質有清晰的認識。正如前文所述，張新權之所以對工業風景、城市風景産生熱情並經久不衰，固然與他的作品受到繪畫界與社會大眾的讚賞有關，同時也與他從青年時代起，就對工業文明圖像有濃厚興趣有密切的聯繫。
張新權的創作重點轉向工業化題材後，他原有的明快鮮麗的色彩便發生了變化。他用較平和、沉著的色調表現舊上海城市景觀的歷史滄桑感，用鮮亮的色點、色塊調節畫面，但保持了早期筆觸的瀟灑與爽利。雖然“為工業文明造像”可能是張新權的創作初衷，但實際上他越來越不拘泥于真實景觀的再現，而是在原型的基礎上放筆自由發揮，大膽利用線、形與色組合的虛實關係，營造氣氛，表達某種境界。這種帶有相當主觀色彩的圖式，也強化了他作品的陌生感即新鮮感，這也是他的作品受到人們肯定，屢屢入選全國性油畫展並獲獎的原因。
2008年以來，張新權的油畫創作又轉向了反映姑蘇古城和我國早期的戰艦題材，代表性的作品有《蘇州河》、《陸巷碼頭》、《巡洋艦》、《海魂系列》、《致遠艦》和蘇州園林系列等。其作品的語言圖式也隨之變化，畫面早期的滿構圖往往被特寫的“鏡頭”所取代，色彩也更趨向單純，多用原色，空白的面積加大，在看似隨意性的動靜、虛實組合中，摻入了構成因素。不用説，這些作品充分表明，張新權在看似自由、隨性隨興的塗抹中，善於呈現他匠心獨運的構思，展示出他對油畫藝術的當代性敏銳而獨到的理解和認知。
用何種名稱來概括了張新權的油畫風格，意象性，還是寫意性？看來，這些都不夠確切。雖然無可置疑，中國傳統藝術的意象性或者寫意性，都有形無形地對他的油畫産生了影響，但他在運用這些技巧時，即使在平面性的描寫中，也始終沒有忘記油畫語言的特性：形的結構、色彩的美感和“調性”，以及空間形態等。這是油畫語言的魅力所在。油畫在中國這塊土壤中茁壯成長，不可避免地要承載中國文化的精神和滲入中國畫的表現技巧，可是它不會也不應該被中國民族繪畫的形式語言所同化和取代，而要保持和發揮它自身的基本特色。這樣説來，張新權油畫創作的價值，遠不在“為工業文明造像”，而是用自己的智慧和才能賦予油畫語言以具有獨立個性的表達方式。藝術之所以為人們所需要，正是因為它運用具有獨特品格的形象語言在提供人們審美享受、喚醒人們對真善美追求的同時，加強對自我個性的自信。
——邵大箴
Unique Perspective and Individual Artistic Language - On Zhang Xinquan’s Art
The contemporary paintings in our country appear to be with diversity and variety both in the sense of subjects and forms. The expansion of artistic territory and the improvement of artistic forms are all based on artists’ independent consciousness and their assuredness of artistic individuality, as well as their broadened horizon and improved personality. Seen from another angle, it also reflects the openness and development of the society, people’s widened and deepened aesthetic desire, as well as artists’ enriched visual experience and expression. For instance, in the traditional Chinese paintings or oil paintings of landscape in the past ten years, new themes emerged apart from those praising the beauty of the land and rurality, such as the outstanding “city landscape” in traditional Chinese painting and “cityscape” and “industrial sight” in oil painting and so on. Zhang Xinquan, the artist we will talk about, is an excellent painter in “cityscape” and “industrial sight”.
Zhang graduated from the Department of Fine Arts in Qufu Normal University, and then attended the post-graduates class in China Academy of Art. He sets out painting natural landscapes and pastoral prospect, but in his stretches to display rural life, industrial products like motorbikes and jerricans often appear, passing on the message that the artist is concerned about modern industrial civilization. Later on, his horizon is broadened to the images of fishing wharf, a corner of a factory and tractors and so on. If those are just out of his subconciousness, his work “The Metropolis Old Shanghai” about the Bund painted in 2002, which won him a great success after its appearance in the 3rd “Selected Artworks Chinese Paintings” Exhibition held in the National Art Museum of China in 2003, showed his great interest in the themes concerning cityscapes of industrial development. It’s quite interesting that 20 years ago, that is in the 1980s, Zhang has already sketched the Worldwide Building Complex in Shanghai with a pen. The painting of “The Metropolis Old Shanghai” seems hazardous, but actually it’s the turning point of his art course. Once he said, “The Metropolis Old Shanghai might be a milestone in my art course, which divided my past and future, to revise my exploration course and pattern. I’m more appealed to cityscape, especially the changes brought to people’s life and emotions by industrialization.”
Zhang was once again inspired after his another painting “The Signal Tower” produced in 2004 won the Bronze Prize of “the 10th National Exhibition of Artworks” and was collected by the National Art Museum of China, which also strengthened his confidence of his art in the future. The paintings that depict the old Shanghai, such as “The Watercourse”, “The Beach”, “The Shiliupu Wharf”, “The Wharf”, “The Tram”, “The Crossroad” and “Beside the Huangpu River”, appeared one after another in 2005 and 2006 in that context. The long deserted tram in the street of Shanghai, and the disused steamship ..., which symbolize the industrialization of China, were seen in his paintings. Industrialization comes together with the repression of western powers to China, harassing the stability and tranquility of the agricultural civilization, and waking up and inspiring the Chinese nation as well. It’s a chapter of interlaced sorrow, grief, inspiration and delight in modern Chinese history, as well as a course that can’t be detoured. His artistic depiction of this period, never aims to satisfy people’s curiosity, but to present the images demonstrating the modernization of china, so as to guide people to ponder Chinese history.
Landscape is definitely the best art form to portray the beauty and strength of our great land, but the themes should be expanded and the language should be updated. It’s the task of landscapes to express the history and reality filled with human emotions in an appropriate way. Therefore contemporary landscape could be endowed with variety. In the realm of art, people’s visual experience and appreciation are relatively immutable while there is still a desire for novelty and difference. How to find the proper breakthrough point in the process of innovation relies on the artist’s knowledge of his own individuality and personality. As it is mentioned above, Zhang’s lingering enthusiasm of industrial sight and cityscape, partly results from the praise he received from the art circles and the audience, and partly from his interest in the images of industrial civilization since his youthhood.
After his conversion to the industrial topics, his use of bright color changes accordingly. He uses mild and placid tone to present the weathered cityscape of Shanghai, and then embellishes it with shining color spots and lumps, together with his earlier free and neat strokes. It’s his original intention to create images for the industrial civilization, but actually he is increasingly less confined to the representation of real sights. Instead, he creates the atmosphere and conveys the artistic conception with the true and false relationship between the lines, shapes and colors, on the basis of prototype. The subjective schemas strengthen the strangeness or the novelty of his works, which might be the season why his works are widely accepted and constantly win national prizes.
Since 2008, Zhang has turned to the topics on the old town of Gusu and the vessels in the earlier times, with “The Suzhou River”, “The Luxiang Wharf”, “The Patrol Vessel”, “Sea Soul” series, “Zhiyuan Vessel” and “The Traditional Gardens in Suzhou” series as the representatives. His artistic language changes accordingly – the full layout is replaced by featured “scenes”, the colors become purer or even primitive, more blankness appears and structure is added to the dilemma of true and false. These works fully prove, without any doubt, that between his seemingly free and random strokes, Zhang has his own original conceptive to demonstrate his keen and unique knowledge and cognition of the contemporaneity of oil painting.
Which name should we use to describe Zhang’s painting style? Expressionism? Or impressionism? None of these seem to be precise enough. But obviously, both impressionism and expressionism in traditional Chinese painting have an influence on his works. When he uses these techniques, he never ignores the characteristics, spell as well, of oil painting – the structure, the aesthetics and tones of colors, and dimensional relationship -- even in planar portrayal. When oil painting thrives in the soil of Chinese culture, it inevitably bears the spirit of Chinese culture and influenced by the Chinese painting techniques, but it should keep its own characteristics instead of being assimilated and replaced by Chinese painting. In this sense, the value of Zhang’s works is anything but “creating images for industrial civilization”. It lies in the unique expression with his wisdom and talent for oil painting. Art is strongly desired because it has the unique visual language to satisfy people’s aesthetic needs, to provoke people’s pursuit of the goodness, and to gain more self confidence in personality as well.
By Shao Dazhen