2026-03-03 14:06
Wu Yiming's new ink paintings evoke the leisurely spirit of Li Yu's Qing Dynasty work, The Casual Notes of Leisurely Feelings. This title captures the scholar's habit of indulging in refined pastimes during moments of leisure. His new ink paintings similarly function as a spiritual diary, though rather than diligently probing life's meaning, they embody a casual, offhand recording of fleeting emotions. In the 20th century, ink painting encountered Western influences: realism, which concerns the representational relationship between painting and objects; and modernism, which engages with formalist Cubism or reflects a restless modern condition. Reforms in Chinese painting during the last century unfolded against this backdrop, yet they encountered numerous conceptual and practical pitfalls—such as the realist tendencies in ink painting, formalistic abstraction, and an unnatural self-obsession. After the late Qing dynasty, modern Chinese painting advanced along two primary paths: one pursued by artists like Zhao Zhiqian and Wu Changshuo, seeking a free spirit through formalistic brushwork and ink techniques—emphasizing freehand brushwork, the incorporation of calligraphy into painting, and the spirit of ancient bronze and stone inscriptions; The other path, championed by Huang Binhong and others, advocated reconnecting with the spirit and rhythm of Song and Yuan literati painting. This approach sought to ground the artistic realm in the refined, aristocratic leisurely spirit of literati and the Zen-inspired mindset of monks. However, its creativity manifested primarily in formalistic personal styles within landscape brushwork techniques.
Fu Baoshi, Xu Beihong, and others recognized that Chinese painting also possessed a formalist tradition akin to Western modern painting—manifested in calligraphy, flower-and-bird painting, and the brushwork techniques of bone-less painting and wash. While distinct from Western modern formalism, this tradition converged with it in the pursuit of formalist freedom, potentially predating Western developments by centuries. Wu Yiming's ink paintings offer a new choice: transcending the modern ink painting model pioneered in the last century by Wu Changshuo, Huang Binhong, and others—which emerged from the modern formalist tradition of Chinese painting—while also avoiding the contemporary art movement's thirty-year effort to incorporate ink painting into the framework of modern art. Whether rooted in Chinese tradition or Western modernism, formalism in Chinese painting has undergone an internal schism since the late Qing dynasty. While ink wash painting's brush-and-ink formalism aligns with modern abstract and expressionist trends, it has failed to address the modernist question of nature's urbanization in its spiritual content. The trends toward realism, abstraction, or expressionism in modern ink painting primarily stemmed from the need for modern ink painting to respond to Western modern art in terms of formalism and spiritual modernity. However, this detached itself from the traditional foundations of Chinese painting. After three decades of Western modernism and contemporary art, the advent of globalization and postmodern consumer society seemed to offer Wu Yiming's generation an opportunity to resolve the conflict between Chinese and Western painting. This emerged as Western society's conception of nature shifted toward ecologism—a philosophy closely aligned with traditional Chinese views on nature and the ideological foundations of ink painting. Following American Abstract Expressionism, the organic formalism and Zen spirit found in ink painting and calligraphy were absorbed by Western painting, thereby breaking down the boundaries between Chinese and Western painting.
Against this backdrop, Wu Yiming unconsciously pioneered a new ink painting paradigm. He reabsorbed fundamental definitions of art from tradition—such as art as an amateur pursuit that reveals literati-like leisure within life's natural state. This self-imposed leisure resembles painting notes, permeated with private sensibilities akin to Ming and Qing dynasty literary notebooks. Formally, painting merely mimics the similarity of objects while embodying a stylized self-expression. Overall, this approach aligns more closely with the urbanized literati tendencies of the Ming Dynasty—a state of leisurely refinement and refined pastimes. Wu Yiming's ink paintings embody the “refined pastime” characteristics of Ming literati art and craftsmanship, such as privacy, a self grounded in the here and now, a state of leisurely wandering, and a model-based awareness of nature. Like Ming and Qing literati, Wu Yiming's ink paintings focus on subjects reflecting “casual leisure pursuits” in daily life: a few orchids, a corner of a lotus pond, a half-length portrait of a colleague, a pair of swans playing in water. He also incorporates urban themes: a car in an empty lot, a segment of neon lights, several landscape photographs and performance stills, and graphic-designed playing card symbols. The refined pastimes of Ming and Qing literati centered on craft-oriented “objects,” achieving spiritual refinement through the materialization of artistic craftsmanship, thereby attaining an “elegance.” The act of handling such “elegant objects” was termed “playing with objects.” Unlike this Ming-era tradition of realizing leisurely refinement through “playthings” or literati-inspired natural imagery, Wu Yiming's “Leisurely Painting Chronicles” aligns more closely with an impressionistic urban consciousness. He emphasizes the mind's focus on a particular landscape, not fixated on any singular physical form, but rather on the impressionistic memory of a scene at the level of consciousness.
Wu Yiming's landscape themes extend beyond natural scenery; his paintings incorporate landscape photography and urban vistas. This not only expands painting's relationship with nature to encompass all levels of “nature” (on-site, photographic, artificial) but also reduces it to impressionistic landscapes at the level of consciousness—a form of phenomenological awareness of nature. Regarding the urban nature of the natural, Wu Yiming inadvertently opens a new field: the modernity of ink painting lies not in directly introducing industrialized modern formalism or fragmented self-experiences that oppose nature, but in elevating the perception of nature from the physical site to a level of consciousness. All modernity in nature does not lie in introducing geometric formalism and industrial landscapes into painting to achieve a representation of objects, but in enabling nature to be phenomenologically represented at the level of landscape consciousness. This holds true even for the depiction of humans; Wu Yiming transforms ink figure painting into an expression of the impressionistic consciousness of humanity as remembered. Early Chinese painting drew inspiration from nature. By the pre-Qin period, concepts of nature evolved into the Daoist view of Heaven. Laozi and Zhuangzi's philosophy emphasized the naturalization of human existence. Later, Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism internalized “nature” as a “mind-nature.” Thus, figure painting established a philosophical foundation rooted in mind-nature theory. By the late Ming Dynasty, Chinese figure painting developed a tendency toward realism, though it also retained the tradition of non-realistic figures associated with themes of immortals and supernatural beings. In contemporary ink painting, the transplantation of expressionism, conceptual art, and performance art has become a pathway for transforming ink painting. In this regard, Wu Yiming, much like his landscape subjects, attempts to transform figure painting into an expression of image-memories concerning figures at the level of consciousness. This approach effectively avoids modernizing the literati spirit within Chinese figure representation. Instead, while preserving the tradition of depicting humanity's “natural” state, it emphasizes modernity through human image consciousness rather than redefining traditional concepts of human spirit. To accommodate the urban consciousness of depicting natural landscapes or human imagery, Wu Yiming incorporates forms from Western painting that resonate with ink wash—such as watercolor techniques, conceptual painting styles, graphic design color palettes, and flat-tinted backgrounds that frame figures. In ink wash coloration, he strives to align the stylized or contrasting hues of modern painting and design with the traditional Chinese aesthetic of “subtle elegance.” As the dawn of China's urban capitalism, the Ming dynasty's “elegant pastimes” and associated leisurely self-cultivation actually continued the Neo-Confucian theory of human nature concerning the inherent qualities of humanity. This system has found renewed spiritual resonance with capitalism's entry into the globalization phase—for instance, the advanced capitalist stage's renewed emphasis on environmentalism and ecological consciousness, or globalization as the excessive “publicization” of human consciousness. Ink wash painting, with its profoundly private and self-aware characteristics from materials to form, retains fresh significance in postmodern society as a form of journalistic painting. Wu Yiming's new ink paintings demonstrate that after a period of divergence from modernism, the tradition of Chinese painting is converging again in the postmodern era. This does not imply a return to conservatism, but rather that ink painting has carved a distinct path toward modernity through its visual consciousness of nature, without abandoning its traditional Chinese foundations.
Related Artists: WU YIMING 邬一名
Facebook
Instagram
WeChat 微信